


Something New, Something Blue

by Letterblade



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (a.k.a. Allura shapeshifts), Aftercare, Allura (Voltron) Angst, BDSM, Begging, Blindfolds, Bondage, Brief Discussion of Polyamory, Crossdressing, Dom/sub, Edgeplay, F/M, Face & Body Painting, Gags, Lingerie, Mind Control, Mirrors, Objectification, Oral Fixation, Other characters in background, Overstimulation, Psychic Contact, Romance, Scene Gone (Subtly) Wrong, Sex Toys, Spanking, Sub Drop, Technological Modification of Orgasmic Response, Tentacles, Truth or Dare, Virgin Lance, Xeno, collaring, experienced Allura, lifespan differences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-13 16:54:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: Allura had accepted by now that Lance, for all his terrible flirting and worse first impressions, is a truly kind-hearted young man who might be even attractive if it weren’t for his ears. Which was hardly relevant, in the end, because she also knew they’d be horribly incompatible. But the giddy little moan he gives as she pulls the rope snug against his chest is forcing her to rethink that very, very quickly.Or, Lance and Allura finally work it out, and it’s one part winning each other cute things at space carnivals and one part ring gags.





	1. Dared

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Voltron Kink Bang between seasons 5 and 6. Posting got delayed, so it's already jossed in continuity details if not in spirit (and it would be _far_ too much to revise.) Contains a lot of self-indulgent headcanons about Altean gender, shapeshifting, and facial markings. This fic blindsided me with both diabetes-inducing schmoop (at least by my standards) and sheer feels more than once, and I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> Many thanks to Mllelaurel for beta-ing and putting up with my continuity fussing.

 

**PART 1 ❇   DARED**

 

Playing Truth or Dare was _probably_ a bad idea, but in Lance’s defense, it is absolutely not his fault that everyone else actually took him up on it. The nunvil isn’t helping. Nobody’s _smashed_ , Lance is pretty sure, like Shiro would’ve played responsible adult and shut it down if they were, but what started as a celebratory paladin toast has devolved, gloriously, into some grade A shenanigans.

Things Lance has learned about his team, in no particular order:

  * Hunk knows ballroom dancing, like he is actually a pretty amazing dancer, and Shiro can at least do the basics—if not much Latin, to Lance’s dismay—and can also dip Hunk over his right arm like it’s nothing.
  * Keith is a _terrible_ singer and Lance is going to be smug about that for years, because fucking finally, something Keith is worse at than him.
  * Shiro isn’t a great singer either, but he can at least carry a tune in a bucket, and can also recite all the chemical elements to the tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” because apparently there wasn’t much else to do while flying to Kerberos.
  * The Holts are too smart to take truths from each other, given how much sibling dirt they can dig for, but then there’s Pidge’s full repertoire of dinosaur calls that she developed at age six and Matt’s downright terrifying Miss Piggy impression.
  * Allura _can_ turn into a very fluffy pink trash tribble when sufficiently motivated, and also can grow to about ten feet fall, which is going to feature in Lance’s more compromising dreams for phoebs to come.
  * _Everyone_ picks on Lance with dares.



Which is not even that much of a surprise, really. He squawks and he’s up for anything, like, _he’d_ pick on him with dares. But now that Pidge—the _menace_ —has dared him to put on a dress and Allura has lit up like a Christmas tree and scampered off to grab something, he’s starting to get a little concerned. Not that Allura’s dresses aren’t _amazing_ , but fluffy princess isn’t really his style, and now he’s standing in his boxers in front of his team waiting for her to come back with his impending doom. He covers it up with a grin and more nunvil.

Allura comes back with something blue and silky spilling out of her arms, and Lance almost squeaks.

She hasn’t grabbed fluffy princess. She’s grabbed _slinky._

Between how tight it is and the whole weird Altean size-changing clothing thing, she has to help pour him into it, and he finds himself biting his lip and hoping nobody’s staring at his face as she drags it into place. It’s backless, with the front held up with a halter that looks like gold filigree but is soft as silk, and by halter he means collar, really, it almost brushes his hairline in the back. Floor length, with a shimmering gauze overlay, but slit up the hip on one side, with more of that silky golden trim dropping in an asymmetrical swag from the top of the slit to the hem at his toes.

It’s _nice_. Okay, so the no-back thing is blatantly displaying the print of his armor burned into his back afer that explosion, but if Shiro can rock the scarred-and-badass look, so can he, right? Even if he’s. Really not badass. He’s embarrassed, sure, but also pretty smug as he slides a bare leg out the slit and basks in the attention. He’d need heels to really pull this off. And different underwear, because the slit’s so high that the hem of his boxers shows. At least he shaved his legs last night.

Pidge groans. “Okay, you look better in dresses than I do, no fair.”

Lance twirls, bows, and gamely pretends he isn’t flustered to all hell by Allura strapping him into this thing. “I’d say that’s thanks to our princess’ _stellar_ taste.”

The game rolls on; the dares gets stupider. Shiro’s down a shirt through concerted strategic effort, Keith has to call everyone sir, and Pidge is drowning in Allura’s fluffy princess dress and can’t stop giggling. Which has left Allura in just a white slip, which is really, _really_ not helping Lance’s life right now. Hunk dares Matt into wearing a blindfold, probably because _everyone_ can tell he’s staring at Allura. Matt gets the kind of grin that makes both Pidge and Shiro, who know him too well, eye him warily, and gets right to picking on Lance like it’s become some kind of contest for the Allura fan club.

“Hey, LanceMcLance, wherever you are, truth or—”

“Dare,” Lance finishes, on reflex.

“Let someone tie your hands behind your back,” Matt says.

Lance keeps up a dangerous grin, trying to pretend his face isn’t flushing from—embarrassment, it’s straight up embarrassment. And this is coming from the the only person who _doesn’t_ hang the whole cuffed-to-a-tree thing over him constantly because he, oh, _wasn’t_ _there_. “Fine. Hunk, my man, do me a solid, since Daredevil here can’t see what he’s doing.”

“Uh…sure, but with—oh, right, there’s rope in all the Castle’s emergency kits, hang on.” Hunk scuttles to the storage cabinets in the lounge.

“Wait, seriously?” Lance says. “Kinky.”

“In case someone gets blown out into space, dumbass,” Keith mutters. “ _Sir_ dumbass.”

“Okay, this is long, but.” Hunk comes back with one trailing end of a—reel, it’s an entire freaking reel. Which, okay, sensible for blown out into space situations. Lance dutifully turns and puts his wrists together, and Hunk makes a few loops, then pauses like he’s trying to remember a knot.

Then Lance’s life as a sane person who doesn’t live in drunk-boner-in-front-of-his-team shameville officially comes to a swift, irrevocable end when Allura blurts out, “Oh, that’s not going to hold—give me that!”

 

**❇**

 

Allura had accepted by now that Lance, for all his terrible flirting and worse first impressions, is a truly kind-hearted young man, capable of profound insight and warmth and courage, who might be even attractive if it weren’t for his ears. Which is moot, for plenty of reasons, including the thing where he’s all swagger and cockiness and foolery and they’d probably be horribly incompatible.

The giddy little moan he gives as she tugs the rescue cord snug against his chest is forcing her to rethink that last part very, very quickly.

He’s drunk, or at least tipsy. They all are. This whole thing is a wretched terrible idea. It’s a bad idea to notice his long neck framed by the filigree halter of his dress— _her_ dress, that she’d strapped him into, and she vividly remembers how his breath hitched as she fastened the high collar. Also a bad idea to notice the way he squirms in the rope like it’s a lover’s arms, or the way he hangs his mouth open as he pants for air, hazy-eyed and red-faced. She could even overlook the dreadful ears if it meant having somebody this lithe and eager and responsive at her disposal again—quiznak, it’s been too long—

The thought is ice water down her spine, a welcome dash of sobriety, and she gathers her scattered wits and briskly drags his arms into place, taking advantage of his particular flexibility to tuck his hands behind the opposite elbows and bind them into a tidy box. She wonders if she could get his elbows touching behind his back if she bound them down rather than in parallel, wonders what that would do to the arch of his chest and how he might whimper and strain. But she’s already tied the harness round his chest and upper arms, it’s too late to change position, and she shouldn’t put him in anything too strenuous when he’s going to have to wear it for a game, and, oh yes, everyone is also looking at them. Pidge is watching her work particularly closely, scratching her chin with mischievous interest, and it’s probably a good thing Hunk is nearby, really, because Lance staggers when Allura’s hands are busy tying off the rope.

“Kill me, Hunk,” Lance groans muzzily into Hunk’s muscular arm. “Kill me, I’m dead.”

“Nope,” says Hunk cheerfully.

“You will live and suffer,” Pidge crows.

Allura tugs the knot home, then grabs the criss-cross of rope between Lance’s shoulderblades instead—it’s practically a handle, letting her control his whole torso. It isn’t her best work. She’s drunk. It’s been millennia. The rescue line’s stiff and she’s not used to working with one end of a longer length, it’s really quite awkward. But it holds, and he sways back against her with a gasp, all bare back and bound arms and pliant shock at his own helplessness. If she was sober enough to trust her skill, this could take his body weight. After all those ridiculous Voltron shows, she knows how flexible he is—oh, the things she could do with him—

“Keep your blindfold on, Matt, no cheating,” Shiro says, mock-stern.

“But humiliations galore!” Matt whines.

“ _Why_ ,” Keith groans, and at least three other people tack on “Sir” for him.

Allura shoves the thought down as hard as she can, along with its whole retinue of attendant images, spins Lance around, and drops him bodily back into his seat. He gives another one of those slack-mouthed gasps at being effortlessly wrangled, and lands off-balance, skirt rucked dangerously askew, long bare leg hanging out so far that she can see the line of a tendon high on his inner thigh. He squirms, red-faced, trying to wriggle into a better position, and then yelps and snaps his legs closed. “Crap—I—could somebody pull down my—”

“Who was it who said we should play truth or dare again?” Pidge asks Hunk, batting her eyelashes innocently.

“I dunno,” says Hunk, scratching his chin, “maybe the same guy who keeps picking dare even when it gets him in really compromising positions?”

“I hate you all,” Lance groans fervently, and Allura has rarely agreed with him more.


	2. Claimed

 

**PART 2 ❇   CLAIMED**

 

Allura takes a great deal of pride in her self-control.

Weeks pass. Lance laughs it all off in the morning, goes about his life like nothing happened, covers her in battle from his sniper’s perch, feeds her the same old lines and clowns off the same old stonewalling, and she could almost pretend that nothing has changed. That they were drunk and it didn’t matter and there’s no point in thinking about it.

The latter is, she tells herself, indisputably true. He’s so young, fragile, short-lived, full of assumptions. He’s her _teammate_.

He’s also staring at her cold-eyed down the long, long barrel of the red bayard.

Go establish formal contact with the mermaids, Allura had said. A lovely trip, another potential member of the coalition, a chance to experience this swimming in the totally-not-made-of-boiling-lava ocean that Lance is so gleeful about. It would be fun, Allura had said.

“You,” Lance says, “are not safe and warm.” His voice is strangely distorted by the coral bubble around his head and the many meters of seawater separating them. He sounds terribly gentle and calm. “We will take the mer-cat and leave this place now.”

Allura slides her thumb over the trigger for the shield on the left gauntlet of her armor and lets the other hand hover over the thigh sheath of her own bayard. She’s found quickly enough that she _hates_ maneuvering in water—it pushes back against her with her own strength, makes her slow and clumsy. Lance swims like a fish. And could kill her with one twitch of his trigger finger. She’s seen him hit targets the size of her thumb in practice at this distance, never mind a person. Currents won’t affect energy beams.

Currents won’t effect the energy ribbon of her bayard either.

She considers, briefly, stalling. She could ask whatever’s puppeting him who they are, what they want with the Blue Lion—but if she gets distracted, loses focus, this thing could lose patience and kill her in an instant. No. She won’t get out of this standoff that easily. Best to force it.

The hand slamming down on her thigh sheath with a flash of light is a distraction, the force of it sending her spinning slowly to the left.

Lance closes one eye. Allura’s left hand comes up so terribly slowly. One instant stretches for years as she bets her life that this _thing_ in her paladin’s mind will take the best opportunity to kill her.

Lance’s headshot splashes off Allura’s energy shield with a snarl of steam and bubbles, perfectly between her eyes.

Allura slams on her jets as high as she dares, gripping the blue bayard so hard her bones creak. He hasn’t shot it out of her hand. She can still win this.

She hadn’t quite counted on how _wretched_ water is to move in. She’s tucked herself behind the shield, leaving only her legs—relatively disposable, under the circumstances—as a clear target. The resistance against the flat plane of energy is tremendous. The jets whine as Allura ratchets them up, because Lance is lining up another shot, because she has to close the distance. The force of her charge is kicking waves all through the little grotto. Her wake bubbles and roils, a vacuum, and Allura realizes her mistake a split second before water crashes in behind her, filling the void with incompressible force.

The water hammer rocks through the grotto like a bomb’s gone off. Right behind Allura’s back.

For a moment, there’s nothing but deafening noise, blurred vision, tumbling. Allura balls up, gripping her bayard desperately tight against her chest. For a moment, she fears her bubble will pop, and nearly screams in frustration.

There’s no sound from Lance.

As the waves and bubbles and rattled-up sediment clear just enough to see, she thinks she can spot one long streak of blue and white. A splash of red. No _sound_. Is his bubble intact?

Lance splays his limbs to slow himself down and raises his rifle with easy calm, face blank.

Allura snarls and flicks out her bayard. Energy whips out. If she’s close enough—

He squeezes off a shot. A line of molten metal sears her left thigh. She growls, short and sharp, the surface of her bubble rippling before her eyes.

And she hits her mark, pulls tight. The blue energy whip wraps around his rifle, lashing wrist and barrel together down to his thigh.

He blinks, eyes widening. Spins with a flicker of one jet, trying to line up a shot even when bound.

Allura tries to close the distance with her own jets, but they judder and die. There’s a lot of dull pain starting to rise across her back that she’s doggedly ignoring. Instead, she reels him in. He fights it, hard. Another shot misses, barely, steam and bubbles against her side. His jets burn, towing them both, but he can’t break the cord of her bayard. The red barrel flattens into his sword, twitching as he saws against his bonds.

She catches him by one armored heel and it’s more or less over. Even if he puts up a good fight, even if grappling in water doesn’t quite give her the leverage she’s used to, she’s still _far_ stronger than him. She kicks his sword hand to stun his grip, then pulls herself up his leg and latches onto his shoulders, above where he could dislodge her with his jets. And laces up his left arm for good measure. She doesn’t quite dare use her energy cord on bare flesh. Instead she slides one hand into his air bubble and folds it over his eyes.

“No,” the thing in Lance’s head hisses. “No. Do not. We cannot survive you—”

“Good,” Allura snarls, and blue light starts drifting off her skin.

Not that she has _any_ idea what she’s doing. No more than when she’d poured her energy into Voltron on Naxcela after Lance’s encouragement, or spread her arms to take the White Lion. Yet she’s been chosen. She’s gotten this far. She can trust her instincts.

He’s not here to talk her into doing mad, unpracticed things with her magic now. But she’s going to get him back. She cannot, _cannot_ afford to mess this up.

Allura pushes, gently as she dares, and Lance’s small, fragile human mind opens up in her hands like a flower.

 

**❇**

 

Lance is in deep, dark water, weightless, without solidity, without place or name, and it’s like that moment on the brink of waking up when he doesn’t want to. When there’s that sinking knowledge that when he opens his eyes, the world will crowd in shouting and bright, and he’ll already be late for school, so he might as well stay in bed, safe and warm…

“Lance!”

The soft and quiet depths shudder around him, and he whines, rolls over, burrows.

A mote of blue light wafts before his eyes.

“Let him _go!_ ”

The blue spins to searing white, and something jolts like lightning down his spine, and he clutches at himself and feels his fingers sink into something thick and strange. His blankets? Why are his blankets wet?

Right. He’s in deep water. Of course his blankets are…

“You don’t belong here,” that voice growls, bone-rattling, and all the thickness against Lance’s skin quails. “Get out of his mind.”

Fear sinks into his blood, icy. No, why is this happening, he wants to be warm, safe and warm—he isn’t sure whether he’s afraid of that whip-sharp, ground-shaking lioness voice or whatever he’s wrapped up in—something dark and gooey sludges through his fingers—

Then he sees her.

She spans the horizon. Her skin shimmers with a deep dark glow, and her eyes are blue-hot suns, and scatters of pink trail in her wake like blood and tears. Her hair lifts and coils and stretches, searing white to match the marks on her face, running down her back like a lion’s mane, and the dim and distant part of him that remembers things that aren’t safe and warm thinks, _oh god, it’s inside her. The white hole._

“He’s _mine_ ,” she snaps, blazing. “Go to quiznak.”

He’s reflected in her eyes, and there’s this purple-black _stuff_ crawling all over him, bubbling slime, and as her light flares, it hisses, contracts. Slides over his mouth and nose. It _hurts_ , it’s so tight, and Lance tries to scream but can’t breathe—and then her hand catches his, and when she touches it, it freezes. Shatters. Glittering black crystal, ashes and dust.

For a moment, they’re just _there_ , him crumpled on the starry floor of the universe, her reaching down?—up?—to hold his hand. Size has lost all meaning. Black crystal dust wafting away in the same wind that runs through her mane. Stripes of white light painted on her skin like a lion’s face.

Then he jolts awake with a heaving breath of thick salt-coral air, and yelps, and struggles.

He’s in his armor. Underwater. His right hand _hurts_ , and when he tries to move it, his right leg comes with it like it’s on puppet strings. His left arm is trapped against his side. Something rubber-smooth over his eyes, something heavy on his back.

“Lance,” Allura breathes in his ear, and peels her gloved hand off his face.

It takes Lance about two tries to get his voice working. He’d thought he was in the reclaimed city? Taking a moment to swim around the towers and take in the view, the whole sprawling crystal clear sunlit ocean of the surface now that the mermaids have been able to move up from the depths? Why is he this deep? Why is Allura on top of him? Why is he tied up?

“I really hope we were just having fun,” he blurts, tongue thick in his mouth. “We weren’t just having fun, were we.”

“Oh, good, you’re back.” Allura’s voice is a little thin. They’re drifting slowly, end over end. The grotto’s full of bubbles, broken coral. The sizzling whipcord of the blue bayard flashes and fades, and Lance twitches, shakes out his aching hand.

Allura drifts off his back, curled around her leg.

“Allura—?”

“I—I think it’s out of your mind for now,” she says. “Maybe for good? We need to get back to the Castle.” She sounds a little pained, scattered, the way she gets when she’s burned vast amounts of magical energy. Or—becomes a white hole? Okay, that part’s a bit scary. “Warn the others, especially Hunk…”

“Allura, are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, voice a little firmer. “Let’s get to the lion.”

Then he sees the stripe branded across her left thigh. Like, oh, say, a high-energy sniper beam had grazed her. Charred armor and undersuit flake off in the water. He isn’t sure whether that’s charred flesh too. He—he can’t look. Shit. He’d shot _Allura_ —

“Lion,” Allura says again, and squeezes his shoulder.

Her jets are broken. His red sword is drifting off in the water. Lance bites his lip hard against a scream, and tries to think about _anything_ other than how close he might have come to killing her, and catches princess in one hand and sword in the other and jets for the sun. “This is,” Lance blurts, barely even noticing what he’s saying. “This is really not how I wanted to be heroically carrying you out from danger sword in hand, for the record, let me just state that for the record, your honor, shit, oh god, I could’ve—”

“I wouldn’t have let you,” Allura says, a little faintly. She’s mostly limp as he pushes towards the high underwater crag that they’d left Blue on, preening and purring in her element. The water’s bearing them up, at least. Lance collapses his sword into his thigh sheath, and Allura does the same with her whip, alarmingly slowly. Just—just get to the lion, freak out later—there, he can see her tail—

They stumble into the Blue Lion’s inert cockpit in a wash of water and popping coral bubbles, and Lance heaves a breath of clean, saltless air, scrubbed and odorless except for that faint crackle of ozone the lions have sometimes, and gets Allura’s arm around his shoulder. The lost bouyancy’s hitting her hard, and the energy drain, and probably the adrenaline dropoff too, if Alteans even have adrenaline. She shudders, sags off her wounded leg.

Lance wrangles them both into the cockpit, trying not to shake, trying not to look at her leg and just fucking cry, right then, in a ball. He’s probably crying anyway, but at least he’s not in a ball, because he’s going to get them back to the Castle, he’s going to get her to a pod, he’s going to fix this. His eyes burn.

“Come on, girl,” he murmurs, sinking into the pilot’s seat and bundling Allura on his lap, careful to let her wounded leg hang out without pressure on it. “Yeah, it’s me, it’s Lancey-Lance. I know I’m not yours anymore. Oh, man, do you even remember me?” He pets the control bars, gives them a few squeezes, mostly with his left. “Just this once. She’s really tired and she’s hurt and I need to get her home safe for you, okay? Please?”

Allura reaches a hand out for the console.

“Oh god,” Lance whispers, “be careful, you already did so much. Come on girl, don’t take any more from her, just let her rest.” He closes his eyes and squeezes again, and he’s pretty sure there’s something wet on his face. “I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough. Please.”

“Don’t be _stupid_ ,” Allura mumbles into his shoulder.

The cockpit lights up blue, and Lance lets out one noise of relief that sounds a little too much like a sob. The Blue Lion bucks under him, rises through the water with glorious ease.

“It’s not that you’re not good enough,” Allura croaks as they burst out of the surface with their breaching spray scattering rainbows in the low-hanging sunlight.

 

**❇**

 

It’s very cold, and everything’s very still, and the first bone-creaking jolt of fading cryo-sleep rocks through Allura like an earthquake.

For a moment, as her mind and vision start to clear, she’s terrified that she’s going to stumble out into an empty castle, millennia gone again, Coran and her paladins long since dust and bones. Alone again. No family, nobody who knows her—

Lance is curled at the foot of her pod.

He’s clearly been camping out. There’s a nest of pillows, snacks, a scatter of drink pouches empty and full, jars, a towel, a bag of hair clips. He’s curled up with his knees tucked against his chest, head down, absentmindedly buffing his nails. He’s still alive. He’s not any older. She hasn’t lost—

He looks up as the pod starts to hiss, dropping his nail buffer and rolling to his knees, then his feet.

Allura stumbles blearily forward right into his arms. God, he’s _warm_. So wonderfully warm after a pod.

“Allura?” he asks softly. “Are you…are you okay?”

She buries a little smile of genuine relief in his hoodie, then picks up her head. “Who are you? Where am I?”

His eyes widen for a moment, genuine fear, before he cottons on. “I’m Lance,” he drawls. “And you’re home safe, and yeah, I know my ears are gross.” He pauses, mouth twisting in thought. “ _Was_ that when you told me my ears were gross? Did I get that mixed up?”

“Oh, that was definitely right then,” Allura says lightly, and reaches up to tweak one, just gently. Lance squeaks. “How are you? Have you been in your right mind?”

“Y—yeah.” He lets out a bit of a shaky sigh. “Coran figured out that I still had some of the stuff in my system, like I’d metabolized it or something, so that thing could…hijack me. But it can’t reach me if I’m not on the planet. It was biding its time until it could get its hands on a lion again, we think. Coran n’ Pidge are figuring out an antidote, Hunk needs it too.” He pauses, bowing his head. “I…I’m so, so sorry. If I’d known…”

“But you didn’t,” she says firmly. “There’s no need to apologize.”

“You got hurt because of me, I—”

“I got hurt because of that _thing_ , and I’m deeply sorry that it made you its weapon to do so. And once we can protect ourselves, we’re taking Voltron back down there and dealing with it once and for all.” She mires for a moment in the creeping fear that it might be more of that mysterious force that had come through the fissure all those centuries ago. That had brought Voltron together the very first time. If that’s happening again…no, they can deal with it. It’s the duty of the next generation to learn from the mistakes of the last. Also she’s still very bleary. _Shake it off._

“You’re,” Lance says, soft and nervous, “still hugging me?”

Allura takes a fistful of his hoodie, burying her cold nose in his shirt. “The word warm might have been ruined but _still_.”

Lance laughs and wraps her up, lanky and sweet, content to let her soak up warmth for a while. Allura closes her eyes and basks. Just this much is soothing some lonely ache, deep down.

“Were you really in my head?” Lance asks quietly after a moment, which at least distracts her from getting maudlin. “Or was that a weird dream when I was all mind-swished? That could totally have been a weird dream when I was all mind-swished.”

“It wasn’t,” she says into his shoulder. “It was…” The only way she could think of? It would have been far, far more rational to restrain him and take him back for Coran to study, or to see if a pod could heal him, or even if simple distance from the planet loosened the spell. To just shove herself _in_ like that—? “I wanted you back,” she mumbles eventually. “I’m sorry. That was—”

“Awesome?”

“Horribly invasive and dangerous and—”

“You had a freaking lion mane, it was cool.”

“—I didn’t know what I was _doing_ , I could have—”

“And pretty hot, not even gonna lie? I mean, who wouldn’t say yes to the best babe in the universe saying you’re hers?”

“ _Lance!_ ” That startles her enough that she rears back and yanks his ear.

“Whaaat?”

“You are such an _idiot_.”

He makes a vague dismissive noise and a cheerful shrug. “Old news, get with the program.” He stretches with a crack of his shoulders. “‘Sides, I’d much rather have you in me than that thing.”

“I,” Allura starts, and then stops.

“Seriously,” he says, voice catching a little, and something raw in his eyes makes her stop fussing. “Thank you.”

“A…all right.”

“Okay, but I gotta ask, if that was real. What does quiznak _actually_ mean? Have we been using it wrong? ‘Cause I’ve pretty much assumed it means fuck, but I wouldn’t tell somebody to go to fuck, I mean okay, I probably could, because you can use fuck in anything like George Carlin says, but it’s not like the first thing I’d go to—”

“Lance,” Allura blurts before he can embarrass himself any further, because that’s just too much embarrassment going around now that all the doubt and guilt has blown over, she’s already having to deal with the fact that he remembers her barging up to an extradimensional entity and claiming him as _hers_ , and she already _can’t_ deal with how little she regrets doing so, no matter how stupid it was.

He blinks owlishly. “Yeah?”

“Just—just—shutupandhugme.”

Lance breaks into an easy laugh and wraps her back up. “Aww, yeah.”


	3. Won

 

**PART 3 ❇   WON**

 

“Okay, so, wait up a moment,” Hunk says, interrupting Coran’s rambling cautionary opus on the traveling festival currently camped out on the fringes of their latest go-to-this-world-and-shake-hands diplomatic mission, a welcome relief after the mess with the residual baku garden goo. “It’s _basically_ a space carnival.”

“Do they have roller coasters?” Pidge squeaks, getting a close-up on her own console. “Space roller coasters? Ohmigod it’s been years since I’ve been on a roller coaster!”

“I should warn you,” Coran begins again, puffing up.

“Our meeting is at sundown in the capital hall,” Shiro says quite seriously, hands planted on his hips. “Almost nine vargas from now, since we got here early. I’ll be back here, presentable, in armor, one varga before the meeting to go over the details and make sure we arrive on time. I expect you all to be as well.”

“Bbbbbbbut,” says Pidge, a truly manic grin tugging at her face.

“If we,” Hunk starts, turning on the puppy eyes full blast.

“—nothing but rigged games and scams!” Coran crows.

“I’ve always wanted to go to one of these,” Allura breathes wistfully, staring starry-eyed up at the screens.

“They were forbidden for good reason, Princess! Watch your wallet! Watch your soul!” Coran points dramatically at the screen. “I, Coran Hieronymous Wimbleton Smythe, will venture into this deadly cacophony to protect you!”

Lance drops an elbow on Allura’s shoulder with his best tooth-sparkling grin. “Then come with me, Princess~! Doesn’t matter how they rigged the shooting game, I’ll win you the biggest stuffed animal there.”

Allura draws a deep breath, and Lance braces himself, still grinning. “Then I’ll hold you to that!” she says brightly.

“Ggxgwhegh?” Lance croaks.

She’s plucked his hand off her shoulder. To hold it. With one of the widest and most glittering smiles he’s ever seen from her.

Hunk, Pidge, and Coran are all staring at him in naked shock. Shading to horror from Coran.

“Paladins,” Shiro says nobly into the convenient silence. “We can never take a day without training, no matter the temptations. So I have one very important exercise for you all.”

At least now everyone is staring at _Shiro_ in naked and unadulterated horror. That’s a relief. Right?

“Raceyoutothepods!” Shiro shouts, and bolts for the bridge door.

“Waugh!” Pidge yelps, and practically levitates out of her seat. Coran takes off with downright inhuman speed, trailing sparkles, and Hunk doesn’t even groan that much as he scampers after them, and Allura tugs hard on Lance’s hand. That she hasn’t even let go of. Oh god. She’s holding his _hand_. She’s going on a _date_ with him. Wait. Is this a date? Is this an actual date or does she think it’s something else? Is he getting ahead of himself?

By the time he realizes that he’s both moving and saying everything that crosses his mind, he’s most of the way to the door with a twinge in his shoulder from how she’s dragging him, and Allura’s saying, “Come _ooon_ we can’t lose this race! Tell me what a date is later!”

 

**❇**

 

The contextual algorithms of the Castle’s translation software are _perfectly_ clear on what a date is.

It might be one of the meaner things Allura’s ever said, and it dogs her as they spill out into the carnival, hand in hand. Cowardice. It’s sheer, rank cowardice. She pretends that she doesn’t know what she’s afraid of as the pulse in the crook of his thumb beats rabbit-fast against hers.

At least, in the dizzying glitter of the midway, it’s easy to pretend.

The rest of Voltron is swept away in the crowd easily enough, lead by Coran bobbing excitedly as he points out attractions at the top of his lungs. Even Shiro’s only an occasional glimpse of black-and-white in the sea of three dozen species. Lance is rubbernecking loudly beside her, bobbing in time with some cheerful music that’s drifting across from somewhere, but even when he shouts that something looks like a “zipper” and bounds over to it, tugging at her hand, his grin’s a touch brittle.

“I _love_ those things do you love those things?” He has to shout; they both do.

“I have no idea,” Allura starts, and takes in the towering and screaming device with its randomly spinning—carriages, those are carriages, full of people, _that’s_ why it’s screaming. She feels a jolt of excitement. “But it looks fun, let’s go!”

They scamper around to find the line, weaving like children through the crowd, and _still_ haven’t let go of each other’s hands. She—probably should, she thinks distantly. She hadn’t planned on doing it this long. His palm’s a little sweaty.

Instead she bumps shoulder-to-shoulder so it’s easier to hear. “So why do you call it a zipper? What’s a zipper?”

“Oh! It’s, uh.” He gives her hand a quick squeeze, lets go, and pulls up the two hanging sides of his jacket to demonstrate the fastening. “This is a zipper. And I guess the ride kinda looks like the teeth?”

She frowns, poking it and watching the teeth mesh. “No wonder you all keep your hair so short!”

He bursts out laughing. “Nah, I keep my hair short ‘cause I’m a boy and it’d look weird and I’m not a mullet-headed loser like _some_ people I could name. But yeah, I remember my sister Veronica got her hair real bad in her zipper once, I had to cut her out and then she complained about it for _months_ …usually it’s not that bad though. Except when I got my fly zipper caught in my holy shit you know what never mind pretend I never said that. Man, Altean clothing seams are so much cooler. How do they _do_ that, anyway?”

“Do what?”

“Know when you’re taking them off and on? And change _size_?”

The ride starts disgorging a string of laughing and staggering aliens of all descriptions, drifting off in twos as the cars open, and Lance jitters forward in line one bounce at a time. “They’re a mesh of hair-fine sensors,” she answers, “that follow the electrical field of your body and manipulate the flexible material they’re embedded in. And there’s extra technology in a seam, of course, to seal it together and recognize whatever action unseams it. Though with clothing that isn’t vacuum-rated, that’s usually just a finger swipe, the extra codes you’re used to from your armor are a safety measure.”

“Okay, it’s good to know I can’t accidentally unzip my suit in space, that would be so very balls.” He jams his hands in his jacket pockets and jitters another step forward. “Whoa cool, the zipper cage thingies are different sizes. Because aliens. Because it’s a _space zipper._ ”

“Why do you still put space in front of everything? You live in space! You’ve lived in space for phoebs.”

“Because space is _awesome_ and putting space in front of everything is absolutely necessary to make it more awesome. It’s science.”

One of the little Unilu attendants scuttles past, squinting at them and making a complicated series of gestures that seem to involve sizing them up by eye. Then shouts something unintelligible back at the taller attendant loading people up. Allura smiles and waves. Lance bounces harder and chatters about how he always wanted to go to space, starry eyed, chancing the occasional look at her over his shoulder.

“Roll up, roll up!” an attendant calls, waving them over. “Aaaare you ready to be bamboozled and shamboozled, triple-flipped on the ride of a lifetime! Competitors rides of lifetimes need not apply! Offer not void in all districts! Step up, step up! Ask about our tie-in salt-shakers!”

Allura has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing—it would _probably_ be rude—and lets the Unilu herd them up to their waiting carriage. He steadies it with two arms while waving the next couple up with the other two, and Allura’s grateful for that, since the thing’s swinging from its track.. It’s really a standing cage of sorts—she’s folded a little, but it’s not quite a seat. It would be a tight fit for Hunk or even Shiro, but it’s comfortable enough for them both, a few inches between their shoulders. Impossible to not touch elbows. Lance shuffles his feet on the grating and turns to flash her a grin.

The door closes, with a bar that tucks down across their hips and nothing but a grating to hold them in, and it’s not glass and she’s not quite standing and she’s not cold, and she doesn’t realize her fingernails are dragging on the bar until Lance folds his hand over hers.

The ride jolts, and moves a few feet along its track, and their carriage swings a little. Loading a few more carriages. Lance jitters in excitement and squeezes her hand. She hadn’t realized she’d turned hers over. “Are you rrrready?” he asks, full of cheer like the Unilu who loaded them up. “Offer not void in all competitors! Man, that guy has been doing customer service for too long.”

Jolt. Swing. They’re moving backwards, at least for now—it’ll reverse, she knows. Her heart’s hammering. They’ve risen a little too. “Lance,” she blurts. “I.”

He blinks, suddenly concerned. “Shit—uh, you okay? Do you need to get off? I don’t know if we can get off?”

“Yes, no, I orbital skydive, this is _fine_ , I just.” She looks straight ahead for a moment, chin up, and swallows once, twice, around a hard lump in her throat. Ten thousand years. Since she’d—

How much of a coward _is_ she? How hard can it be to just—throw it all aside—begin again like she has with everything, everything—

“I know what a ruggling _date_ is,” she says in a rush.

Lance hiccups.

The ride starts thrumming, bone-deep and janky. Another jolt as it starts in earnest. Rising backwards, rough at first, easing as they pick up speed, swaying dangerously. When she looks back over at him, he’s wide-eyed, almost afraid, almost _guilty_.

“Yes it’s a date,” she manages, just as they flip head over heels. Lance makes a loud, wavering yelp, and Allura squeaks, tossed off her semblance of seat, pinned by the bar over their hips. His hand clutches at hers. The ground flickers back and forth twenty feet beneath them, thirty.

They tumble backwards this time, and it jolts Lance out of his shock. “Wahooooooooo!” he shouts, pure joy, voice echoing around their little cage. “It’s a date! The best girl in the universe asked me on a da—”

It’s a double flip. His voice cracks as he yelps.

“—aaaaaaaate!”

 

**❇**

 

By the time they stumble hand in hand onto the exit ramp of the zipper, Lance isn’t sure which way is up or whether his soul is in his body or whether he’s dreaming. He’s got that blood-heavy feeling in his skull from too many inversions, and he drags one hand against the fence, rat-a-tat-tat, and can’t stop grinning like a loon.

The other hand is _still_ clamped in Allura’s. The slick rubbery stuff of her suit’s half-gloves is slippery because Lance’s palms are sweating, and her fingers feel a little cold, and he wonders if it’s because Alteans run a little cold or because that’s how Altenas get nervous or is it actually an Altean thing or something else, and then their eyes meet for a moment, and then it’s probably longer than a moment because somebody is shoving Lance’s back. “C’mon, you’re holding up the line.”

“Ack, sorry, sorry, she asked me on a date!” Lance squeaks, turning to gesture a little frantically at Allura. There’s a sigh of _Lance_ from behind him, and then he looks up, and up, and realizes that the guy shoving him is about seven feet tall and lizardlike and has three arms.

“ _Mammals_ ,” the alien sighs. “You all have terrible taste. She doesn’t even have a ketzl!grrahh.”

“ _My_ ,” says Allura mildly. “That’s very presumptive.”

Lance glowers and clings to Allura’s elbow. “Don’t listen to the rude lizard man you’re perfeeeeeeeect.”

“I _know_ ,” Allura says brightly, then neatly rearranges his arms so he’s like a girl at a dance and promenades him right down the exit ramp. Okay, it’s not just the zipper, it’s _really_ not just the zipper anymore, Lance’s stomach is all butterflies, and they’re passing something that smells like fried dough once they pour back out on the midway, but that might be a bad idea. Allura’s arm is strong and solid and a little cool against him—maybe Alteans are colder than humans, is that a thing?

“Yes, we’re a degree or two cooler. Don’t worry, I’m quite fine.” She gives him a little squeeze. “You always seem overwarm to me.”

“I’ll warm you up any day oh my god I literally don’t realize I’m saying things with my mouth. I’m saying things with my mouth when I think them. That is a thing I’m doing.”

“Judging from your behavior, I’m guessing that’s a thing you do quite often.”

“Yeah it was usually on my report cards with all the stuff about impulse control. Holy crap I need to shut up. I’m taking you on a date.” He poses. “I’m cool. I’m suave. I know what I’m doing.”

Allura mostly looks like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. “That’s _also_ very presumptive. Maybe I’m taking _you_ on the date!”

“I asked you!”

“I’m holding your arm!”

“I’m Loverboy Lance!” He’s pretty sure that’s at least two octaves above his normal speaking voice, but she _does_ laugh a little then, so. Victory? It’s the kind of laugh that keeps trickling out when she doesn’t want it to, shoulders shaking, even when she’s facepalming with her other hand. Allura needs to laugh more. Okay, Lance already knew that, that is like an incontrovertible fact of the universe, but.

“Well by _that_ logic!” She crosses her arms across her chest, putting on her very best sullen pout. “Stuffed animal. Now.”

Lance bursts out laughing, for real, mostly in horror, and Allura peeks at him out of the corner of her slot-eyed Keith impression and cracks.

“Your _face!_ ” she squeaks, grinning.

“My face is fine!” And feeling very hot—but she’s laughing, holy crap, she’s laughing for real and it’s glorious. “Your face is—fine, also fine, really good, oh man, yes, stuffed animal, your wish is my command…”

She reclaims his elbow, and he looks around, craning his neck for any sign of a shooting gallery. That _doesn’t_ use a laser gun. He knows how to handle a rigged airgun, but who _knows_ what you can rig with a laser?

“Ooh!” Allura calls, and steers them over to the other side of the midway. It sure is a rack of—well, strange and multi-legged pastel plushies of various sizes. He’s not sure what they’re meant to be plushies _of_ , but really, _that_ doesn’t matter.

It’s not a shooting gallery, though. It’s a tower with TEST YOUR STRENGTH blazing in neon lights above it.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Lance grins as Allura bounds up to it. “I hope you don’t expect me to win that one.”

“Nope!” Allura says cheerfully, and cracks her knuckles.

“Duuude you’re gonna break it.”

“Alteans aren’t _quite_ the strongest species around! If it can handle a Reginacoerl it can handle me.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“You probably don’t want to!” She circles for a bit, bobbing, trying to get the booth-keeper’s attention, until Lance just shrugs and hands her the hammer. At that point, she’s gotten the attention of a few waist-high Unilu children who seem to be taking bets on her performance. Lance winks at them, tells them who _he_ thinks placed a losing bet, passes tickets to the booth-keeper, and stands clear.

Allura gets a good grip on the handle, falls into a martial artist’s stance, gives an ear-splitting war cry, and swings.

The war cry means that everyone within at least twenty feet turns to see her smack the hammer down with a crack that sounds a _little_ too much like something breaking, and then a spring pops and something rockets up to the top of the tower and rings a very loud bell.

Which also means that everyone within at least twenty feet hears the booth-keeper blurt, sotto voce, “That wasn’t supposed to do that.”

Allura turns, beaming. “Is that enough for the big blue gzanysquik, then? I’d very much like that one.”

Lance freezes, because he isn’t _quite_ sure whether this is going to bring the local equivalent of Varkon down on their heads, but the booth-keeper pastes on a cheerful smile, trots Allura around for a few bows to the crowd which have her increasingly flustered, and lavishes the giant blue tentacular plushie on her along with what looks like an actual bribe for her to please go away. Which she, of course, graciously refuses, and swans over to deposit the plush beast in Lance’s arms.

“Holy _quiznak_ ,” Lance says, in profound and genuine admiration. The plushie is almost too big for him to get his arms around, and _very_ soft and squishy. “That was awesome! Thank you, thank you, wow!”

“I did it!” Allura _bounces_ , and it’s the least regal and princessy Lance has ever seen her, and it makes his heart do something funny in his chest. “Come on, let’s see what else there is!”

There is, in fact, a lot. There’s a space roller coaster, with Lance’s new friend tied onto his shoulders like a backpack with the front pair of tentacles and squished against the back of the seat, and they whoop all the way down it. There’s a space mirror maze, which swallows them for a good half a varga, and Lance is pretty sure he hears Hunk and Pidge arguing somewhere deeper inside, but he’s on a damn date, _he_ isn’t going to blow their cover.

There’s something kind of like space skeeball, which she’s tolerable at and he’s better at, and though there are no plushies to be had, they do walk away with an unreasonable number of sparkly plastic necklaces. There’s something kind of like space fried dough, which leaves them about as messy, and Lance is brushing sugar off his plushie’s tentacles _forever_ after they’re done. There’s something kind of like space slushies, which comes in violent purple with an alarming flavor name that puts Allura off, but turns out to be quite good.

Finally, down a dingy side string of tents just past the slushie shack, they find a _real_ shooting gallery, and it’s Lance’s turn to pass Allura his slushie and swagger up cracking his knuckles. It’s a beat-up old range that speaks to his soul, almost like the one that used to tour through Veradero Beach every spring, and the elderly Unilu carnie seems almost surprised to see someone come his way, but puts on the patter like a comfortable pair of boots.

Lance scopes the range, counts out their last few tickets, and settles in. Unties his plushie, rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, and flashes Allura a grin.

“You’re going to have to score quite high with what you have,” she fusses, clearly doing math in her head.

“Don’t worry, babe. I got this.”

Allura leans against the railing beside him, eyebrow raised. “Babe?”

“Babe? No babe? Some babe? However much babe you want?” Lance feels his cool slipping, grabs for it along with the worn-smooth stock of the gun. “He’s got a shortage of nice plushies though.”

“Oh, that’s all right—just win me something nice.” She winks at him. “Your pick.”

No pressure, Lancey Lance. Pick out the perfect gift for the perfect space princess. For a moment, he jitters, looking over the prizes strung along the top of the booth—more random space junk than prizes, really, but there’s a high-ticket sparkly blue flower that looks like a hairpiece of some sort.

He taps the math out against his thigh. Assuming he burns two shots figuring out how this gun fires, then he’ll have to go for the moving targets in the back of the booth and hit eight shots out of ten. Only chance with the tickets he’s got.

“All right,” he says, feeling his heart hammer in his chest. “Time to do right by your princess.” Oops, that one was out loud again.

Beside him, Allura snorts. “Well, you hardly need concern yourself with _that_.”

“Sure, but a guy’s gotta treat a lady like you right.”

“I am—no longer the princess of anything much, after all.”

Lance freezes for a moment, eyes widening, then lets go of the gun and drops to one knee. Right in front of the passers-by and the old carnie. It’s not like there’s a line, after all. “You’re my princess,” he says, a little more raw than he’d intended, and catches her hand to kiss the back of it. “No matter what.”

She makes some tiny squeaking noise, and when he picks up her head, she looks just a little bit stunned. She swallows, once, then lifts her chin. “Well, then. Show me what you’ve got, paladin.”

“Yes _ma’am_. Sharpshooter in da _house!_ ” He bounces back to his feet, takes up the gun, and puts his eye to the barrel.

First shot. It doesn’t ping a target, of course. And it’s damn hard to see where it goes in the dim booth, but he’s pretty sure the gun’s shooting to the left, a little down.

Second shot. Definitely to the left and a little down. And it _curves_ —straight in that direction should’ve hit one of the closer targets.

He breathes. Makes his adjustments. Starts drilling the beat of the furthest row of moving targets, cranking back and forth on their track, into his head.

Third shot. Hit. Allura whoops, and that almost throws him off. No, he can do this. He won the biggest prize at the Veradero carnival for the other Jenny, after all.

Fourth shot. Miss. Shit. He only gets one more of those. He swallows hard, readjusts his grip ever so slightly.

He hits the zone. Six shots in a row. One more, one more—he’s not sure whether he’s saying that out loud or Allura is—

Miss.

He’s gotta make the last one. Simple as that. He’s frayed, heart pounding. The targets seem to be ratcheting back and forth too quickly on their track. Are they a little irregular? Had he miscalculated? No—no, he’s fine, just make the damn shot—

Allura’s hand rests softly on his shoulder.

Lance closes one eye, breathes out, and the zone falls over him like a blanket of silence, clear and perfect.

The targets are sluggish. Absolutely predictable. Lance squeezes off a shot like it’s nothing, and the last target spins on its rail, and Allura breaks out into a cheer.

Lance jumps up with a whoop for his victory dance. And claiming his prize. “ _That_ one,” he says smugly, pointing to the sparkly blue hair flower, and he actually hears Allura squeak.

“Yes!” she says, hands clasped, practically throwing off sparkles of her own with a huge grin. “The sparkly one!”

The old carnie fishes it down with something like actual good cheer, and once it’s in his hands, Lance turns and gestures vaguely at Allura’s head. “May I…?”

She blinks, then nods eagerly. He tucks it carefully in at the base of her bun, resisting the urge to bury his hands in her hair and never stop. God it’s gorgeous, thick and silky-soft. She lifts a hand to feel it, then lights up. “Show me! What do you call those photos you take?”

“Selfies! Holy shit, yes, selfie time, _why have I been forgetting to take selfies_ …”

They drift away from the booth, back to the midway for the full carnival background. And take selfies. Plural. Allura is just as picky as he is—always a good sign in a date—and the quest for the perfect carnival selfie ends with them cheek to cheek.

They both give their seals of approval. Lance tucks his phone away. Allura hands him back his space slushie. His other arm is still on her shoulder from the selfie.

Neither of them moves or says anything for long enough that Lance becomes painfully, crystal-clear aware of Allura’s breathing. The way she’s turning her face towards him.

“Allura…”

The whole world goes distant. The noise around them is a dull roar, a sea, nothing of consequence. Somebody bumps into Lance’s back and he doesn’t even care, and he’s not sure whether it’s because this is a huge romantic moment or because his heart’s pounding like he’s in the cockpit staring down a white hole. His hand’s shaking a little as he touches her cheek, just fingertips, reverent; her skin’s cool and dark and almost uncannily smooth, silk-soft, and there are a few wisps of white escaping her bun and sticking to her temple in the heat of the sun, and her comm earrings sparkle and send little specks of pink light scattering over the tender spot below her ears. Her _ears_.

Her lips part as he touches one, drawn like gravity, lightly tracing the faint curve where the points swoop a little down. They’re stiffer than human ears, a little warmer than the rest of her.

Her lips move like she might be saying something he can’t hear, and then she catches one side of his jacket and stretches up a little and kisses him.

Her lips are cool and soft, and at first it’s almost chaste, tender. Lance’s hand shakes like a leaf, traces over her hair. She opens her mouth just a little, teasing at his lower lip, exploring, and Lance’s brain shorts out entirely.

Somebody bumps into him _again_ and he spills his slushie down her butt.

His entire life flashes before his eyes as Allura gives a disgruntled squeak, turns, looks down at the cup splattered on the messy midway, then _wiggles_. Sticky purple sluices off her spacesuit. Not so much as a smudge. The wiggling is just plain unfair.

“It’s hydrophobic,” she says, by way of explanation. “You’d _think_ people might look where they’re going—do you want another?”

“Drink or kiss,” Lance croaks.

“Well, one of those is easier,” she says brightly and turns back to kiss him again, so casually that he squeaks into her mouth. “Oh, but let’s get another one, though, I like the taste after all.”

“Oh wow,” Lance manages. Sharing a drink with Allura. Allura _kissing him_ , sudden and easy as taking his hand. Holy crap. He could get used to this. “Yeah, that’s—yeah.” Her hand’s holding his chin, just lightly, and for a moment it’s like _she’s_ the one pausing, entranced, running fingertips over his skin like he’s made of glass.

Then she grabs his hand and tugs them back down the midway to the space slushie shack, and he whoops with laughter and scrambles to keep up, joy bubbling up like sunlight in his veins.


	4. Marked

 

**PART 4 ❇   MARKED**

 

They go on another date, and it feels like fumbling their way with long sticks in the dark because they’re not sure whether anything’s real.

The other humans seem to think it’s very important to rib Lance about it. A _lot_. Apparently this is some sort of human social ritual. Allura watches him squirm with amusement.

She starts teaching Lance how to properly use a broadsword, and he’s all swagger and gangles and terrible flirting every time she disarms him and drops him on his ass,but he’s grinning when he babbles something about being defeated and carried off and ravished, and she winks and tells him to be careful or she _just might_.

They go on another date, and laugh more, and fumble less, and kiss for what feels like hours in the Blue Lion.

Shiro, studiously studying the wall behind her in turn with her face, has a very serious conversation with her about the delicate balance of maintaining a relationship on a close-knit team, then softens and wishes them well.

She starts wearing the sparkly blue flower in her hair nearly every day without much thinking about it. She hasn’t dug out the rest of her hair accessories and there’s no reason not to spruce herself up a little. That’s all.

One evening, as Lance and Hunk and Pidge are all piled in the lounge watching a Bii-boh-bi soap opera, Lance catches her hand and pulls her tumbling onto the couch, and in half an hour she’s laughing so hard her sides hurt, and in two hours she’s almost dozing off, piled amongst overwarm humans with their hearts beating too fast and their ridiculous bubbling _life_.

Coran doesn’t particularly have a serious conversation with her, because Coran just looks at her like he understands everything—because of course he does—and asks, with great weight, if she’s _quite sure_ , and she feels something in her chest crack right then.

There’s a spring flood building in Allura’s belly, one of those old Altean spring floods that still happened out in the wilderness where the climate control wasn’t as strong—boiling-hot from the early season rockfalls, simmering in the corrosion-pit pools in the mountains until it overspilled its banks and thundered forth to cook the winter’s fallen leaves into the raw sludge of new life. She _wants_. She’d thought that part of herself was sealed away, or dead, or withered, or—whatever, but it’s not, oh gods, it’s not. She wants to have him on his knees and cuff him to her bed, and explore every inch of his skin and whatever new and exciting quiznak is lurking in his pants, and find every way they can fuck and not stop for days, and, _and_.

They float amongst the ice-diamond rings of a gas giant so big they can barely see the curve of it. A wall of swirling color. The finest art the universe can produce. The Blue Lion weaves between the glittering rocks with feather-light ease, skating to a halt on one big enough for her to sprawl across it and be dwarfed, and Allura engages the faceplate of her helmet and tugs at Lance’s hand. “The view’s better out there.”

“Holy crap,” Lance breathes, plastered to the cockpit window. And then he fumbles, engages his helmet, turns to her a little wide-eyed. “Lemme get my phone, I need pics of this.”

The little pocket camera doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. Lance bobs off the surface of the asteroid with an unwitting twist of his heel, and squeaks, and spins slowly head over heels. Allura kicks off softly with one toe, floats into the blindingly beautiful void.

Lance has managed to stop his spin with a tiny pulse of his thrusters, and watches her like she’s the most beautiful thing here. Gods, that could go to her head. _He_ could go to her head. Allura remembers all her childhood daydreams of being able to breathe in space and float with all her hair out like she’s in a pool, nothing between her and the universe, and spreads her arms, and basks.

Lance skims over and catches her hand and pulls them together for a selfie. Usually they each pull at least five stupid faces. This time, they’re both just dopey-grinning, high on beauty. Lance nearly fumbles his phone, catches it, drifts laughing like a loon.

Allura kicks her thrusters on for just a moment, catches his hand, and pulls him in for void-dancing. A fine Altean tradition. He’s a fast learner—not really surprising, given his gymnastics. Picks up the partner tricks well too. They dance for what feels like hours. She takes pictures of him floating in contortionist poses against the supermassive planet. “Space!” Lance calls, spinning in a back bend, voice a little tinny over the comms. “Space is so freaking awesome!”

Finally, they drift back to the Blue Lion, trailing bits of sparkling dust in their wake that she promptly vacuums off in her jaw airlock—just as well, the shards are probably razor sharp. They’re both flushed, giddy. The flood in Allura’s belly is spilling over, boiling, and the moment they tumble into the cockpit, she catches Lance’s shoulder, spins him around, and shoves him in the pilot’s seat.

“A-Allura?” he squeaks, eyes big as saucers.

She pulls off her helmet and clambers into his lap by way of answer, a bundle of armor and excitement. Lance gets the hint and fumbles with his own helmet, and she whisks it out of his hands and sets it rolling on the floor next to hers. And then kisses him and doesn’t stop. Not until he’s breathing fast and red-faced, making thin, desperate little noises into her mouth. She’s at least trained him not to stick his tongue down her throat right away by now.

Allura pulls back and stares down at him for a moment, hair messed, lips red-bitten, then reaches up to unclip her hair.

“Driver roll up the partition please,” Lance whispers breathlessly as Allura’s hair comes tumbling down. The sparkly blue hair flower catches in a tangle, and she wiggles it free and tucks it behind Lance’s ear for safekeeping.

“But—you are the driver?” she asks, a little lost.“Why a partition?”

“It’s a song,” Lance manages to get out, before her mouth closes hungrily over his again. Blue gives a rumble of amusement beneath them, then tosses her head and kicks lightly off the asteroid surface.

Allura blinks, surfaces, and reaches over to brush her fingertips across the console. “Is she taking us home?”

“I…think so…” Lance swallows hard, peeling his hands off her to take the control bars. Stars whir by. The Blue Lion and Lance in one turn a celebratory cartwheel, then two because Allura squeaks and laughs and holds on to him with her hair flying everywhere and asks for another.

It’s not exactly the most _efficient_ flight back to the Castle they’ve ever logged.

Once she settles on her bay floor, Blue chuffs, tips her head, and pulls the chair out from under Lance.

Lance yowls, then laughs as they land in a pile of limbs. “Not in front of your salad, huh, girl?” They disentangle themselves, find their feet, slide down to the door, tumble out of the lion.

“My room,” Allura says, and tugs hard on his hand.

“Oh boy,” Lance squeaks. “Oh boy, yes!”

They scamper.

Lance has never been in her suite before. None of the humans have. He doesn’t get that much time to gawk, though, because she backs him against the door for another round of necking. He’s a little bolder this time, snugging one arm around her waist, tracing her cheek markings with his thumb, then the sensitive points of her ears, and that makes her whine a little and kiss him harder.

Then the gauntlet of his armor catches in her loose hair.

“Ow—!”

“Crap, sorry, hang on…”

“Why don’t we just…” She reaches up to help, teasing long waving strands loose, and then one of them catches in her own gauntlet. Right. _This_ is why she shouldn’t take, her hair down when she’s in full armor, she knows this by now. “Not. Be in armor.”

Lance gulps audibly. “Y-yeah…”

They disentangle her hair, shed gauntlets and chest pieces. Allura gets her belt out of the way too, given how long her hair is, then twines her arms around Lance’s neck and taps in the codes to release the seal down the spine of his undersuit.

“O-oh,” Lance stammers. “Allura, I…I just wear boxers…”

Allura has no idea what boxers are or what part of his body they go on, nor does she care. “It’s all right,” she whispers, and starts to peel him like a grape. “I want you. I want to see you.”

Lance nods, a little shaky, and starts helping, shimmying his shoulders out of the suit. Whatever boxers are, they don’t cover anything above his waist, and she drinks in the view. She can practically hear his heart hammering, far faster than usual, feel the heat pouring off his face. She hasn’t started on her own undersuit yet; it’s her slick, skintight gloves on Lance’s bare brown skin. Part of her wants to strip him bare and keep all her clothes on, relish the power play. A bigger part of her just wants to _feel_ him.

Lance’s hand hovers shyly on the seal of her own undersuit. “Yes,” she whispers, urgent.

It takes him two tries to tap in the code. By then, she’s unclipped his belt, opened the seals of the leg armor so it falls clattering away from his lean thighs, and started to plant kisses on him as he fumbles her undersuit out of the way. She’s wearing a sleeveless unitard underneath, not just for chest support but for help with the chafing at the bottom of the breastplate and the tops of the thigh armor.

Lance’s fingers on her bare shoulders are light, almost hesitant, running over the swells of her arm muscles in awe, and it’s that, somehow, even with his gaze falling wide-eyed and guilty to her chest, that makes her pause for a moment. “Lance…? Are you all right?”

“Y-yeah,” he blurts urgently. “Oh god please don’t stop. Crap. I’m sorry. Uh.”

“You’re—nervous?” Allura prompts, taking a guess.

Lance ducks his head, like he’s trying to hide his face. “I…yeah, okay, you got me, it’s, uh. I’mavirgin.”

Allura blinks twice.

Well, that shouldn’t be surprising, really—she’d had no idea at first whether his terrible flirting was appealing to human women, cultural context and all that, but none of the other paladins acted like that, and Pidge seemed to find it as off-putting as anybody else, so. Not very surprising, actually. She feels a little silly for not having thought it through.

Lance has buried his face in both his hands.

Allura tugs on her own ear once, hard, to steady herself before she does something careless to him in a rush of hormones. “Lance,” she says gently. “It’s fine. I won’t think any less of you for it. Or more? I don’t know how humans value inexperience.”

Lance makes an inarticulate noise into his hands. “Uh…less if you’re a guy, more if you’re a girl? I think?”

“Well, _that’s_ hardly fair. I suppose by human standards, we’re both to be thought less of, then.” She runs a hand through his hair and leans up to kiss his forehead between his fingertips. “I’d like to get the rest of my armor off, if that’s all right with you. I don’t like wearing it inside for long. But beyond that, if you want to take it slow—”

“No,” Lance croaks. “Please don’t think—” He swallows, and his voice gets stronger. “I-I want to do everything with you. Everything you want to do that is. Just because I’m nervous doesn’t mean I don’t…”

“I don’t want you to feel obligated to push through your nerves for me,” Allura says softly. “That’s all.”

Lance fumbles for a moment, back pressed to her closed door like he’s trying to sink through it. “I’m not…nervous about _you_ ,” he says, slow and careful. “Or—stuff. I’m. I’mscaredbecauseIdon’tknowwhatI’mdoingandIdon’tknowifI’llbegoodenough.” He crumples a bit. “There, that’s all, please let me fall through the floor now.”

“But then I couldn’t keep kissing you,” Allura says, quite reasonably, and Lance squeaks. “Lance, it’s all right. You already have everything I could possibly ask of you right now.”

“Wh…what do you mean?” He finally peers between his fingers, sounding genuinely surprised.

“I like taking the lead,” Allura says, gently smoothing her palm down his shoulder. Not _universally_ true, perhaps, but the thought of letting go of her control like that is somehow even more terrifying these days, and Lance certainly isn’t ready for _that_. “I like partners who respond to that well, and who are open-minded and enthusiastic, regardless of experience. I _know_ you’re a fast learner, I’m hardly worried about that. I _like_ the fact that you’re communicating this, because communication makes things much better. And frankly, I don’t know how humans work, and you wouldn’t know how Alteans work even if you had experience with humans.”

“Oh…y-yeah, I guess I wouldn’t.” Lance slowly pulls his hands down, and Allura catches one, turns it over, and kisses it. He looks a little calmer, at least. His nerves might not be entirely rational, of course—nerves rarely are. “Your, uh, armor,” he says after a moment. “You said you wanted to…?”

Allura flashes him a smile and thumbs the catch of her thigh armor. “Quite!”

She gets off the rest of it, undersuit included, and after a moment, swallowing, Lance does too. Boxers turn out to be the loose shorts she remembers from that game. He can’t keep his eyes off her. She studies him in return with open satisfaction—sleek, leggy, all smooth tan skin, with flat little vestigial nipples which are very cute, and a belly button which is even cuter—then catches him by the hand and tugs him gently off her door. He gangles after her to perch on the edge of her mattress, hunching into himself a little.

“Oh, should I turn the heat up?” Allura asks. “You seem to like things a little warmer.”

“I’m…yeah, that’d be good, I think.”

Allura waves a few commands at the room’s climate control, then scoots a little closer. Bare knees touching. He looks like the worst of his nerves are fading, at least. Carefully lifting a hand to touch her face, and she mirrors that, then leans in to kiss him, slow and sweet, until the tension starts melting.

“You keep touching my markings,” she murmurs, breaking from his mouth to plant kisses over his cheek, trailing to the side of his neck. He makes unwitting little noises, softens, tilts his head in surrender.

“Is that—okay? I just keep being surprised that they don’t feel different from the rest of your skin. With the glowing and everything. Plus they’re cute.”

She laughs. “Cute? I suppose! We’re all born with them, they’re nothing extraordinary to us. Though I didn’t know about the glowing part either.”

“So they don’t do that normally?”

She tilts her head, mouth twisting as she considers it. “I could probably make them bioluminesce if I really focused on it? I’ve never tried…” She focuses, visualizes, and frowns a little. “Or…not. Those marks aren’t always under our control, they indicate things about our innermost selves.”

Lance pulls back a little, blinking and trailing his thumb over one pink crescent. “Like how super-shiny magical you are?”

She ducks her head a little, sheepish. “ _Apparently_. Though it’s also…well, some words don’t translate to races that don’t shapeshift. Body image and range of shapeshifting. Sort of what you might call gender, I think?”

“Like…whether you’re a boy or a girl?”

“More or less? I can only take feminine forms when I shift. Although small modifications to please a partner are a different matter.” It’s an addition entirely for his benefit. His eyes go very wide, and his skin is hot and damp as she cups his cheek.

“Whoa,” he whispers.

“So my markings show the color of Altean blood, because metapheebs ago, before certain vital technologies, those like me brought forth new life in blood. Coran always takes masculine form when he shifts—which is rarely, admittedly, he’s very proud of his usual form. So his markings show the color of the raw energy by which those like him would kindle new life.”

Lance opens his mouth, closes it, and says, “I don’t know whether to be more weirded out by thinking about Coran when I’m this turned on or by the idea that Alteans come blue. Do Alteans come blue?”

Allura laughs. “There’s a tinge to it, yes.” She goes from petting his face to threading her fingertips through his hair, which is surprisingly soft and fine, and he melts into it. “Those who can take any form when they shift, regardless of whether they consider themselves feminine, masculine, between, or beyond, show the red of dusk and dawn and the in between times.”

Lance digests it all slowly. “So…you couldn’t actually turn into a boy even if you really wanted to?”

She shakes her head. “Not all over, certainly not for any extended period of time. It’s in conflict with my basic conception of myself.”

“And I guess if they’re kind of tattoos that you’re born with, that’s why they don’t feel any different…”

“Tattoos?”

He explains in a rush, albeit a slightly alarming rush that involves a lot of needles. “Ask Hunk if you’re curious, actually, he’s got one on his shoulder. Big thing where he’s from.”

“And it’s—permanent?”

“Pretty much. Like there’s laser surgery that can take it off, but it doesn’t always get all kinds of ink, and sometimes it scars. Oh man, you’re wearing the humans are stupid face again.”

“I just can’t imagine choosing permanent markings! Even if somebody shapeshifted their social markings rather than painting them, they can still change…”

“Social markings?” Lance echoes, blinking.

“Oh! They’re an old tradition…here, I could show you one.” She closes her eyes for a moment, visualizing lines of pink angled out from the corners of her eyes, sharp and clear, winging up over her temples. The mark of a warrior. Not one she’d worn back in her old life, on the rare occasion she’d had cause to wear one at all, but it seems appropriate now, with pink paladin armor piled next to her door.

“Cooool,” Lance breathes, tracing her skin with fascination as the color blooms. He’s thoroughly relaxed now, comfortable in his underthings and not hesitating to touch her. Allura smiles and scoots a little closer still, close enough for them to bump bare shoulders, and Lance leans against her with a soft hum.

“They’re only worn in large, formal gatherings, at least—” She still has to stop herself from _now_ sometimes. “By my day. A few generations back, they were worn all the time. They’re still useful for when one does not know most other people there and has a need to display one’s station. It makes it easier to make introductions, understand social context, remember who’s who, all that sort of thing. There’s a wide variety of patterns that can be combined. It’s standardized—it’s not about expressing aesthetics, it’s about expressing one’s place in society. They’re almost always in the same color as one’s natural markings.”

His tongue darts out to wet his lips before he answers. “So like. Hello my name is Allura, only for your job and stuff?”

“Yes. Not that I needed to wear them myself very often.”

Lance cracks a smile. “Everyone knows a princess, huh. Do you paint them on or shapeshift them on?”

“Oh, that’s entirely by preference. Shapeshifting’s faster, but some people think painting is more meaningful. I just think it’s fun, when there’s the time. Especially for ornamental markings.”

“Wait, there’s a third kind?”

“Of course! Ornamental markings _are_ about expressing aesthetics. Any color, anything you like. Well, there are whole _schools_ of artistic theory about them, and all sorts of people will get snobby if you wear the wrong kind in the wrong place, but.” She bites her tongue, once, hard. It’s been _phoebs_ and she still can’t bring herself to talk about it like it’s all gone sometimes. “Usually you paint those, or somebody else paints them. Friends will do it together, just for fun. Or lovers.”

“So basically makeup,” Lance says, seeming much more at home.

“Humans use facial markings? I’ve never seen them on any of you.”

“Well, we’re mostly guys, and guys don’t wear makeup unless they need to show up under stage lights or something.” Allura dimly recalls Lance having _very_ loud opinions about proper stage makeup at Coran and his attendant Bii-boh-bis during the dark days. “Or unless they’re really emo, I guess.”

“You keep saying things about human gender differences,” Allura says, puzzled. “But there doesn’t seem to be much physical or behavioral variation between human men and women. Except height, perhaps?”

“Yeah, girls tend to be shorter. And well, the only human girl you know is Pidge, and she’s kind of…okay, I can’t think of a way to say this without it sounding like an insult, but she’s not very girly.”

“Oh, by human standards too!” Allura relaxes a touch—it’s not like she hadn’t thought that too, then later wondered if she was projecting assumptions.

“Like if you ever meet my sisters, you’ll see.” He’s looking into the middle distance by now. “Man, you should meet my sisters. They’d love you.”

“You’d…” Allura falls silent, swallowing past a knot of _something_ in her throat that she can’t even name.

“‘Course,” Lance says, bright and easy.

“Lance?” Allura says, catching his hand, because she quite desperately needs a distraction from the something-in-her-throat. “Do me!”

He squawks and turns practically purple. “N-now?”

“Show me how a human woman would mark herself. And then I’ll do you.”

“Ohhhh,” he croaks. “You meant…never mind.”

“What?” She’s already on her feet, tugging him towards her bureau.

“It’s…uh…you…that’s slang for like…sex. Doing the do. The whole do. Um.”

“Oh! Well, that’s for later, if you like.”

He stops breathing for a moment, one part earnest enthusiasm, one part—genuine shock. “R-really? Even after I…?”

“Oh, Lance,” she says fondly, and catches him in a kiss. He answers with abandon and a moan. She pulls back after a moment, cupping his face in both hands. “I meant what I said earlier. And I don’t string along those I’m interested in. Truly. It may have taken me some time to see your worth, and get over your _terrible_ first impression.” He laughs at that with a wince. “But I wouldn’t bring you here just to tease you.” She tweaks his nose. “I’m having fun with this too, though! Cultural exchange! And it’s been so long since I got to play with somebody like this.”

He cracks a lopsided grin. “Anytime. Seriously. I’m surrounded by, like, manly men who’ve never exfoliated in their lives, it’s depressing. Well, Hunk lets me give him facials, but no makeup for him.”

“Oh, is that the skin mask thing you do?”

“Yup. It’s _super_ relaxing. And I really had to start taking care of my skin when I got to the Garrison, the air there is sooo dry.”

She runs a hand over his soft smooth cheek, down the side of his throat to his shoulder, his chest, all silky, and he leans into it, preening. “Well, it’s come out lovely.” She kisses his nose, and he squeaks, and kisses hers back. “So,” she says. “Human style?”

“Ahhhhh I can try! Let me see what you’ve got? The texture might be pretty different…”

In short order, her entire dresser is turned inside-out, and Lance is testing different applicators on his hand and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the pinpoint accuracy, color saturation, no-smear bonding, and one-swipe removal. And chattering about different kinds of human makeup and how it’s this whole complicated cultural mess of overlapping connotations for women. And how a lot of it is done with blended soft powers rather than distinct lines of bright color, so it’s probably going to come out looking a lot clownier than it should. “Especially for someone as classy as you.”

“You can blend it if you catch it right away,” Allura points out helpfully. “Especially that brand, with the golden tubes. It takes a bit of time to react with air and solidify.”

“Awesome. Let’s see what I can do…”

Allura settles in her dresser chair and sweeps her hair back. Then, after a pause, carefully slides her coronet free and settles it with great care on her bureau. and closes her eyes as Lance works. He mutters something about forgetting foundation, “there’s no color for it and you have perfect skin anyway, _so._ Contouring, though…”

He works a little bit on her cheekbones, light touches and blending, though he’s not covering her markings. Then her eyes, fussily, a few passes.

“These things are _killer_ for eyeliner, I gotta say. Better than anything I’ve ever used. Okay. Uh.” He rummages a bit. “Lips?”

“Lips? Goodness!” Allura feels her face heat a little, and opens up. She expects a light stripe, perhaps—quite cheeky. Instead he’s _coloring._ “All the way around?” she squeaks, once he finishes filling in her top lip.

“Yeah…? How else would you wear it?”

She opens her eyes to see him blinking down at her, a red applicator in his hand. “Stripes, occasionally, but even that much is…” She swallows hard. “Markings on the lips are— _well_. Blatantly sexual. By Altean standards.”

Lance claps a hand over his mouth with a muffled noise that might be laughter. “Oh my god. Like, if a chick wears nothing else, she might wear lipstick, or gloss or something. So basically every Earth girl who wears makeup is like 100% Altean scandal all the time?”

“Basically!” Allura blurts. “Well, the first rule of cultural exchange and all that.”

“The first rule…?”

“Your most basic assumptions of normality will be challenged.” She bats at Lance’s hand when he tries to cap the applicator. “I said give me Earth makeup, give me Earth makeup! We don’t do things halfway, do we?”

“Nooo, no we don’t. Okay then. Coming in!” His hand shakes just a little as he fills out her bottom lip, touches up the corners. “All right, I think that’s the best I can do. Oh god, Veronica would judge me so hard. This looks like stage makeup.”

Allura opens her eyes and takes herself in. The full red covering on her lips is disconcerting, but at least she was prepared for that. The rest, though, is surprisingly subtle, delicate. Fine black lines tracing the very bottom of her upper eyelids, ending in a miniature echo of the warrior’s wings social marking she’d displayed earlier. Blended color to her cheeks to give her face a little more definition, much as he’d insisted upon doing on himself for the Voltron show. And a subtle gradation of shimmering pink on her eyelids.

“It’s lovely, Lance. For Altean ornamentation, this would be very subtle and delicate. Except for the lips, of course.”

He laughs a little sheepishly. “Hey, gotta love it when this sort of thing works in your favor.”

“Your turn!” She bounces up from her seat and pats the back of it, feeling mischief rising in her blood as well as the returning flood of desire. “I’ll give you social markings, at least some basics. Blue or red?”

He blinks a few times as he sits. “Right…because it matches the gender stuff? Okay, like if I could shapeshift?” He fidgets with his hands. “Not even gonna lie, total honesty hour, if I knew I could change back no problem, sure, I’d want to turn into a girl sometimes for, y’know, stuff, because. It’dbefun. But I’m definitely a dude. Sooo…?”

She considers that. It _is_ a difficult thing to think about without shapeshifting as an indicator. “If it’s just about variety of _stuff_ , then probably blue. Besides, you are my blue paladin.”

He gives her a thoroughly dopey smile at that. “Sure thing, Princess. Any way you want me~”

She feels a mischievous smile tugging at her mouth. “Oh, just for that…”

 

**❇**

 

Lance plants the heels of his hands on his thighs, sits in Allura’s vanity chair, tilts his head back and closes his eyes in the universal getting-made-up pose, and tries very hard to deal with the fact that he’s pretty sure he’s never been this turned on in his _life_. This is Allura and he’s in her _room_ in his _underwear_ and she’s been touching his _face_ and she _wants him_ and he can’t cope, he’s giddy, he is absolutely totally not suave at all and it’s embarrassing, but she seems to think it’s okay, so, well? He guesses it’s okay that part of his brain shuts off when she touches him like that. He’s practically swooning at a thumb on his cheek. _Jesus_.

He really hopes he doesn’t come in his boxers because he’d die on the spot.

Allura holds his face steady in one hand, all business now, and Lance can feel one of those pinpoint-accurate felt-tips gliding across his cheekbone. She’s giving him little blue triangles, just like an Altean, and that makes something in his chest warm and fluttery and sad.

“You’re used to being marked, aren’t you?” she asks, conversational.

It takes him a moment to respond, because some part of his brain is hung up on how she keeps saying _marked_ instead of made up. It’s just a cultural difference. Really. It’s not like she’s writing her name on his ass or anything. It’s not like he wouldn’t let her. It’s not like she couldn’t write _property of Princess Allura_ right across his face with that little applicator she’s holding, and he’d wear it right down to breakfast the next morning and _still_ be trying not to come in his pants, and he’s going to have to take that up with his dick later because he’s supposed to have _dignity_.

“Uh, yeah,” he manages, feeling like his tongue’s too big in his mouth. “My sisters would draft me for practice all the time.” He’s speaking without moving his jaw much, he’s used to that too.

“Even though it’s not a thing human men usually do?”

He shrugs without moving his head. “None of us cared, like we were kids. And it’s fun.”

She’s moving on from his cheeks. There’s a dab at the corner of each eye—not full liner, but a dramatic wing, drawing attention. Probably like the thing she’d shown him earlier, and he’s pretty sure she hasn’t picked up another applicator, so still the boy-blue. Social markings. Then she smooths his hair back and paints a V on his forehead, the point almost at his third eye, the legs trailing into his hairline.

She pauses for a moment, and ruffles his hair, and he wonders if she’s done. And then she says, low and soft, “Open your mouth.”

Lance is vaguely aware of a little whimpering noise which totally did not come from him. He obeys, of course, almost on reflex, lips stretched. But this isn’t familiar at _all_ , this isn’t snapping his mouth back shut and whining a get-on-with-it as his sisters bicker about the lip color. This is sitting in front of the woman he’s head-over-heels for, red-faced and so turned on that every time she touches him it’s like lightning, and she’s got one hand in his hair and he’s just _there_ with his eyes closed and his mouth open and his brain running eighty miles an hour with _modifications to please a partner_ and _she could put anything in there and I’d worship her_ and okay, another thing for the agenda for the consultation with his dick, because he’s thinking awfully hard about blowing mystery alien junk—

The applicator touches his top lip, and a little too late, his brain catches on something else. Markings on the lips are— _well_. Sweet baby Jesus, she is _marking him_ as _down to fuck_. She hasn’t picked up a new applicator either. This is a _social marking_ for _down to fuck_.

It’s not a full ring of color like lipstick. A stripe, perfectly down the center. Top lip, bottom lip, dripping down his chin. Which really, really, _really_ isn’t helping where his brain is going with other things she could put in his mouth.

“There,” Allura says, and he hears a satisfied click. “You can open your eyes now.”

Lance opens his eyes. Lance doesn’t entirely manage to close his mouth.

He’s pretty sure what the pattern is, but he looks at himself in the mirror anyway, and god, she’s moving to stand behind him so he’s framed by her boobs. Any delusion that he might be even slightly hiding the effect this is having on his is promptly punctured. He’s thoroughly flushed, right to his ears, hair mussed from her hands. The luminous pale blue of his markings stands out vividly. They’re sharp-edged and beautifully crisp for freehand work—these Altean applicators are a dream. There’s a gentle curve to the V on his forehead, the legs bowing in as they trail down from his hairline, and the point between his eyebrows is very crisp. The wings are also sharp as hell, angling upward and fierce. The stripe on his mouth is the width of his pinkie, simple, hard to take his eyes off of.

“O-okay, what am I,” he manages.

“Well,” she says briskly. “You’re a man, as you said.” She taps his cheek. “You’re a warrior of great renown—you’re a paladin, after all.” She taps his temple, near the wings coming off his eyes. “You’re attached to the crown.” She taps his forehead, between the legs of the V. “That would be me, of course. And I think you’ve figured out what this means.” She touches the corner of his mouth, and that’s not a tap at all, that’s firm and almost intrusive, and he feels his lips part in reflexive answer, hears himself give another one of those faint, embarrassing whimpers.

“I-I-I’m just assuming at this point that you’ve marked me as a royal fucktoy, have you actually marked me as a royal fucktoy.”

“Well, _that’s_ a word!“ Allura’s other hand cards through his hair as her fingers linger on his mouth, dragging along his lips. “The term would be companion. One who’s attached to the crown purely out of friendship, with no set duties. An intimate. Not _necessarily_ sexual, though a companion who disliked that assumption would not extend the line up over the lips.”

“I deeefinitely don’t dislike that assumption.” It doesn’t come out like a line at all; it comes out wrecked. He can barely recognize his own voice. He watches a little wild-eyed in the mirror as one of her hands flattens on his head, not quite holding him in place but making a firm suggestion, and the ring finger of her other drags over the marking on his top lip. Some distant part of him admires how it’s still not smearing. Mostly he’s trying not to lick her finger. And failing.

Allura hums behind him, almost subliminal, and her hand on his head tightens, angling his face upwards as she dips her ring finger into his open mouth. He watches himself curl his tongue around it, glassy-eyed with arousal. Two fingers, then, pressing down on his tongue, gently exploring, and it might feel clinical if it wasn’t so blatantly, demandingly sexual. Lance figures, what the hell, he’s never blown anything before but this is _definitely_ the time to start, so he closes his lips and swirls his tongue and does his hazy best.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Allura whispers.

Lance whines into her hand and closes his eyes, digging his nails into his thighs to try to handle the way his cock freaking _twitched_ in his boxers at that. God, he’s still in just his boxers. She presses her fingers deeper, and he moans and works around them. Then struggles as she brushes the root of his tongue, knuckle deep, and for a moment she just stays there, like she likes watching him squirm, and that sure is another twitch from downstairs.

“Lance? Is this all right?”

“Hhhrs,” Lance manages, and she pulls her hand back to let him talk. _Just_ enough to let him talk, wet fingers tracing patterns on his lips. He swallows hard. “There’s a gag reflex back there.” He doesn’t quite dare open his eyes, knowing he’ll see himself right there in the mirror. “It’s possible to…t’work past it, I think? Practice, I guess. I-I don’t know how.” He wouldn’t even have thought to learn how until right this moment, but apparently Allura touching him like this is making his brain do things he barely even understands.

“I see,” Allura says, voice low with an edge of danger. “Perhaps we’ll find out.”

“Holy crap,” Lance croaks, feeling his heart hammer faster.

“But first…mm.” Allura makes a contemplative sort of noise and rests her chin on his head. “Do you have any particular expectations, when it comes to—doing the do, as you put it?”

Lance stares at himself, blank-faced, then goes back to staring at her, trying to figure out what her expression means, because he has no clue how to even answer that question. “I…I don’t know?”

“Do you know what sorts of things you might enjoy?”

Lance fumbles for coherence through the montage of blurry, hormone-drenched images filling his head. “Honestly, I…a-anything?”

She snorts softly. “Never tell a woman that, Lance. You’ll wind up cuffed to a tree as she flies away with your lion.”

Lance groans. “Goddd that was just one time. Also we have a perfectly agreeable timeshare no flying away needed. Also you can cuff me to a tree any day, that’s fine.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “That’s a thing that I said. Out loud. Kill me now. I am a kinky motherfucker apparently.”

“I noticed,” Allura says, and Lance feels the bonfire on his face flare up. “If I do anything that causes you unwanted discomfort or distress, will you tell me immediately?”

“I—y-yeah, okay, I just. I’m having a really hard time imagining that.”

“Consider that I don’t know anything about your sexual preferences _or_ the intimate details of your anatomy and have the strength to crush your throat with one hand,” Allura says, and there’s an edge to her voice that wasn’t there before.

Lance freezes with a slight croak. “Okay, point taken, please don’t break my dick.”

“I have no wish in the universe to hurt you.” The edge is gone from her voice; instead she sounds incredibly frank, almost humble. _That’s_ what makes Lance open his eyes, try to wriggle around in her grip so he can look up at her face. She lets him, and cups his cheek tenderly in one hand. “So promise me that much.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I promise.” He swallows hard, and then says, almost nervously. “What…d’you mean by unwanted discomfort?”

In answer, she smiles and presses two fingers back into his mouth. Right to the back, far as she can reach. Lance groans, struggles to accommodate her, and she keeps him right there, unyielding, until the second time he fights through gagging, and then lets him go. He pants, dizzy with arousal, and she goes back to cupping his cheek, still with the same sweet smile. “Not unwanted, yes?”

“Oh Jesus fuck,” Lance breathes, fervent. “No, that’s—I-I can’t handle it for long, but god, it’s good. You’re amazing. Oh man. This is…this is really not how I imagined seducing an alien babe would go—”

Allura wrinkles her nose and pinches his, making him pant open-mouthed with a disgruntled noise.

“I mean I know,” Lance blurts nasally. “That…that’s not who you are, and that’s not what this is, and I thought…I-I had this whole thing built up in my head…” She lets him go, and he wriggles his nose for a moment.

“Cute,” she squeaks.

He makes a squeak of his own and covers his nose protectively. “I wanted to be, like. Swooping in all charming and ravishing. A-and here I am being, like. Royal fucktoy. And I’m not saying—I mean—this is. So much better. Not just because it’s real.”

Allura takes a sharp breath as she digests that, and then her face softens. “Because _you’re_ real. With yourself.”

“I guess?”

“Oh, Lance,” she sighs, very fond. “I didn’t even start to _like_ you until I saw what was under that facade.”

Lance winces. “Ouch. Fair. But ouch.”

“Are you disappointed in yourself?” she asks, surprisingly gently.

“…past me?” Lance answers after a hunch-shouldered moment. “Present me is okay for now I guess.”

“Present you had best consider that he’s damning my taste with faint praise.”

Lance is startled into laughter, and then she runs a hand through his hair and it feels like all the gnawing shadows melt away at her touch. “Yes, ma’am.”

Allura puts on a mock-offended face. “Oh, I am _far_ too young for ma’am!”

“Your highness?” Lance suggests, tilting his head in thought, and also into her hand. “Princess? Sir? Mistress? Best girl in the universe?”

“Just Allura will do,” she says fondly. “I don’t stand much on protocol, I get quite enough of that the rest of the time.”

“Fair enough.” He kisses the heel of her hand, because it’s there, and Allura smiles and leans down to kiss him. Chaste at first, but it doesn’t exactly stay that way. Complete with a light nip to his bottom lip right where his marking trails down, and that sends sparks down his spine.

“I’m gathering,” Allura says as she finishes, “that you don’t know much more about your sexual preferences than I do.”

“I…y-yeah. Pretty much.”

“Then we’ll just have to discover them together,” she says brightly. “As long as you keep that promise about signaling if you don’t like it.”

He nods, maybe a little too fast. And then hesitates. “And…same for you?”

She blinks at him.

“Not with the super-strength obviously but like. I-it’s not like I know much about you either, or if I ever get too weird…”

“Of course.” She tilts her head. “But if I stop you, it’s not because you’re too weird, it’s because something is not to my personal preference. There’s a difference, you know.”

Lance feels like he’s just been handed some weird piece of machinery and he has to stop and turn it around a few times and squint at it, but he can’t actually deny it. Okay, that’s been like this entire conversation so far. Allura is making this entire huge _thing_ somehow straightforward and sensible and nothing like he expected it to be, even when she’s also scaring him about breaking his dick, even when she’s _also_ sticking her fingers in his mouth like he’s her plaything, which is unreasonably fucking hot.

“Okay,” he says, a little too late. “Okay. And…thanks.”

“For what?” Allura asks, sounding a touch taken aback.

“For…all of this. Talking. It’s. Good. I-I know that sounds weird to say, it’s not like I don’t also want to just…god, I want you so much. And I don’t know what I’m saying anymore—”

Allura shuts him up with a kiss, to his genuine relief.

“Then you’re welcome,” she whispers warm against his cheek.

 

**❇**

 

After all that, Allura decides it is absolutely imperative to drag her new-minted royal companion to her bed and kiss him silly. He looks delightful sprawled on his back with bite marks all down his long neck, chest heaving a little. There’s a distinct tent in his boxers that’s making her increasingly certain that his quiznak’s penetrative and _very_ interested in the proceedings. He’s even got a little damp smear on the thin fabric.

“Allura,” he pants, when she grazes a hand down his lean stomach. “Allura, I…”

“Mm?”

“I just…I, uh. That got pretty heavy so for a while I wasn’t five ticks away from coming in my boxers but now I am again and well that’s a thing. I might. Um.”

“Coming?” She sits back to straddle his thighs. “Oh—climaxing?”

“Yeah…?”

“So you’re an orgasmic species?”

His eyes go very wide. “There are people who don’t come? That’s _tragic._ ”

Allura laughs. “Some of whom can feel intense sustained pleasure for a varga or more without a stopping point. Don’t knock it.”

His eyes go even wider. “Seriously? Okay, I’m gonna give you that one. That’s not tragic at all. I’m not sure my brain would survive.”

The way he blurts it just makes Allura want to find a way to keep him from climaxing and see how much pleasure he can handle for how long, because the thought of him writhing and begging for mercy is—intoxicating, frankly. She shoves it aside for later; she’ll need to understand his body better. “Do you climax and then have a refractory period, or do you experience climactic peaks within sustained pleasure?”

“The, uh, first thing.” It’s the answer she expected, after his reaction to the idea of a varga of unending pleasure. “I’ve heard for some girls it’s the second thing? Human girls, I mean. But not guys, we, uh. It gets really sensitive and we need some time to get it back, well, up.”

“How much time?”

“Honestly, right now, probably like five doboshes? I’m not even sure I’m joking.”

“Oh! Well, that’s practically nothing.” She skims a hand up his thigh. “Then I would very much like to see it?”

“You mean…m-my dick or the other thing?”

“Yes.” She plays with the bottom hem of his boxers, smiling down at him. “I want to see how you handle yourself—it’s one of the best ways to learn new quiznak.”

He’s startled into laughter. “Okay so _that’s_ what quiznak means. I…you want me to just…?” His hand creeps to his waistband.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Allura says lightly, and he laughs again, face flushing even darker. “As I’ve said, I’ve no wish to string you along. You’re my royal companion, after all. I’d be remiss if I let the first time you come under my hands be either inept or swift.”

Lance swallows a groan and jams the heel of his hand against his groin, like he’s trying very hard to hold himself back. He swallows again, like he can’t quite manage words. And drags his boxers down. Allura helps, wiggling them past the cock that springs out, no doubt fully engorged, with a little bead of fluid at the tip.

Lance closes his hand around it, almost delicately, and Allura folds her fingers over his, feeling how tight he grips it, how fast he moves, tantalizing bits of velvety skin beneath. He’s biting his lip, ears burning, but there’s no hesitation left in him, and he offers up his first climax of the evening with a handful of strokes and a full-body spasm and ragged cry that’s absolutely delicious to watch. And a few spurts of white ejaculate that catch Allura on the chin, entirely by surprise, because she’s leaned in to get a nice view.

“O-oh,” Lance croaks. “Crap, sorry…”

Allura pats his thigh soothingly, and picks off a dollop to taste it. Bitter, not pleasant, though not the worst in the universe. She crawls up over him as he pants, sagging into her mattress, and paints a fingerful down his chin, right over his marking.

Lance makes a strangled groan and clutches the sheets, eyes hazing.

He recovers. She shows him hers, kisses away his guilty misery at the scar on her left thigh. He is, as she expected, a fast learner, eager to please. Eager to bury his face in her breasts, and even more eager to explore her cunt, touching her with giddy awe. She’ll get to the shapeshifting later, she explains: this is her natural quiznak. She shows him where to put his tongue, how to open her up with those long fingers—not that she needs much by now, she’s been soaking her underthings since they straggled back in the Blue Lion. They’ll be nicely compatible without shapeshifting.

She’s got him sitting against her headboard, fully hard again and practically shaking with raw desire, before he gets nervous again. “W-wait, crap. Uh. Do we. Stuff. Banana.” Something in his throat bobs as he swallows hard, and he plants a shaking hand on her shoulder. “Condom! Are there space condoms do we have space condoms.”

Allura blinks at him for a moment as the translator works on that, then smiles and shakes her head. “I can’t conceive—we have implants for that! And I know I’m not carrying any infections.” She runs a hand soothingly through his hair. “Unless humans can carry an infection even if they haven’t been with somebody?”

“I…I don’t think so? I’m pretty sure. Not.”

“And you went through the full disinfect cycle that one time. It’ll be fine.” She straddles his thighs, palming his cock by way of greeting, and he squeaks and flushes even darker. His hands settle around her almost hesitantly, skimming over her back and the curve of her hips. His nerves are back, even after the the previous play. She idly wonders if humans place more weight on penetration.

“Holy shit,” he breathes as she gives his cock a welcoming stroke, making sure to keep her touch on the lighter side, especially about the head. “This is really…you’re really…”

“Yes,” she says, smiling indulgently, and kisses him, tasting herself on his lips. “Oh, yes.”

“Yeah,” he pants, face so close she can feel the heat of his breath. “God, yes, please…”

He fumbles a hand down alongside hers—not pushing her out of the way, but feeling how she lines him up. Fingers trailing lightly for a moment through the hot folds of her cunt.

She slips him inside and sinks him home with a roll of her hips.

All the breath leaves him and he shudders under her, clutching her tight. “Oh, _wow_ ,” he breathes, fervent. “Oh wow oh wow oh wow.”

She rolls her hips again, experimental, seeking a good angle since it can’t move at his will. It’s a lovely texture, velvety skin with its little cowl about the head dragging inside her, hot and hard beneath. He quivers under her, muscles in his belly fluttering as he tries to find purchase to thrust.

“Move with me,” she whispers in his ear, and rides.

He finds the rhythm. He digs his heels in, holds onto her desperately, bare skin pressed against hers, damp and hot and full of _life_. She scratches furrows alongside the scars on his back, pulls his head back by the hair to kiss him soul-deep. He clutches so hard something in her back cracks in relief, surprising strength in his wiry arms. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this, skin-starved and grieving. Spring floods bringing a desert to life.

It’s not the most vigorous fucking, not by far. Mostly they’re too distracted by trying to burrow into each other’s skin, and all his nerves have melted away and he’s just pleading, raw, that he doesn’t want to come yet, that he wants this to last, but Allura knows it won’t, and she bears down, chases her pleasure, doesn’t let go of him for a moment. He buries his face in her shoulder, shakes under her, lifts it with a gasp only when she starts to moan in earnest, wide-eyed and drunk on her pleasure.

She comes, slow and rolling. He’s about halfway through trying to warn her when her spasms finish him off regardless; she feels the pulsing, the heat inside her, and lets that carry her through her own lazy orgasm.

Lance slumps against her headboard, stunned and beaming.

“Lovely,” Allura breathes, then pulls him down and rolls them both up for cuddles. He is, she quickly discovers, an octopus, wrapping every limb he can around her even as he’s still panting and a little bit stuck in her hair. It makes something in Allura’s chest unhitch, something she hadn’t even realized was there, and she lets herself be plastered to his blood-warm chest and basks.

“So,” she sighs against his chest. “Another five doboshes, then?”

“Oh god you’re gonna kill me,” Lance groans into her hair. “But what a way to go.”


	5. Bound

 

**PART 5 ❇   BOUND**

 

Lance, sitting at Allura’s vanity still fully dressed, has to brace his elbow to keep his hand from shaking as he drags the blue applicator down his chin.

She’s perched behind him, hands on his shoulders and watching with nigh-predatory fondness in the mirror, and he’s flushed dark with arousal even as he carefully caps the applicator and sets it aside. The same markings as their first night together: honored warrior, royal companion. Done by his own hand this time.

It was a good idea to have him do it himself, she thinks, playing fondly with his hair. He’s already a little hazy-eyed, entranced. Leaning back against her with a soft moan. They’ve had only a few short, tired evenings between missions so far, a few more rounds of light experimenting, mapping his hot spots. Ordering him around. Holding him down. Stuffing her panties in his mouth as she rode him. Prying out a few lurid fantasies about marking him with her name or playing with him on the Castle’s bridge, then scrawling her name onto his thigh where it stayed for days. He’d worked himself up into a shuddering tizzy over a single finger in his ass because of human masculinity complexes, then promptly discovered he loved it and begged for more. At least now they have time, and she’s getting a sense of how he ticks, and she is damn well going to make use of it.

“So,” she asks, _almost_ managing to sound casual, “how do you feel about me stealing your lion again?”

He blinks, then squeaks with laughter, clamping one hand over his mouth. “Well, uh, there’s no tree here. And honestly I’m pretty okay with that because there also wasn’t a bed at the tree and also I was in my armor and just generally it wasn’t good for. Uh. Yes?”

“Yes?” she asks. His ears are brick red—alarmingly round or no, they have their uses.

“Y-yeah. You can. Tiemeup. If that’s what you’re asking. Holy quiznak yes please.”

She laughs and spins his chair around, feeling a thrill of excitement already tingling down her spine. Not that she’s been dreaming about this for a _while_ or anything. He probably has too, at least? Neither of them was drunk enough to not remember the last time she bound him, or how much he enjoyed it—oh, stars and fire, he’s staring at her, eyes a little wide and breathing a little fast, and it goes right to her core, a stab of heat in her belly.

She’s going to make him hers. Helpless and writhing.

She tells him that as she pulls the set of magcuffs out of her drawer. The _full_ set, collar and ankle cuffs too, with the delicate band for her palm that she can wear as a tether point for the collar, carefully programmed to recognize her word and gesture for ease of control. Lance’s eyes rake over it all, and he swallows visibly, licks his lips, and does that particular little hips-down squirm which means, Allura’s learned, that he’s trying to manage his arousal.

Then he offers up one wrist, palm-up, a little hesitant, so sweet and earnest that she feels her heart clench.

“I like doing the collar first,” she says softly, and raises his hand to kiss it instead. Not his knuckles, as he so often does with her; she likes kissing the faint and well-cared-for gunner’s callus on his index finger.

“O-oh. Yeah. That sounds…” He runs out of words for a moment.

“Take off your jacket?”

He nods, almost fumbles it off. She considers asking him to strip the rest of the way, but that can always come later; she likes the way the soft, thin fabric of his shirt folds and clings around his lean chest. So different from the high-tech clothes she’s used to. She drags nails over the nape of his neck, and he whines softly in his throat and bows his head.

The collar adjusts as she latches it round the base of his throat, contouring itself so it fits smooth and snug, no pressure points. Lance drags a deep, shaky breath and butts his head against her shoulder as the hinge and latch disappear.

“Comfortable?” she asks softly, petting his hair.

“Super comfy.” He sounds faintly puzzled and reaches up to explore it with his fingers. “Am I crazy, or is it, like, softer?”

“It’s softer! Adaptive materials, after all. They have settings.”

“Ooo, _settings_. A-and. Wow. Yeah.” He picks his head up, hazy with submission, still with one hand folded over the collar.

She picks up the paired handpiece and smooths it over her right palm, then activates it with a touch. Glowing blue energy spins from her hand to his collar, leashing him snug in an instant. It’s not set to a particular length yet, just a steady, gentle tug. A reminder, more than anything else. He leans into it, breath hitching. She plays with the controls: setting the length, moving so he hits the end of it, watching him come along all eager and pliant. Resetting it so she reels him in. By now he’s standing, letting her lead him across the room until she backs his knees against the edge of her bed, kisses him thoroughly, and finds the setting that transfers his leash from her palm to her headboard.

Lance squawks as she shortens it, not leaving him enough play to stand next to the bed, and sprawls back on his elbows with a whump, eyes huge.

“I think that’s where my royal companion belongs, don’t you?” Allura asks him cheerfully.

“I belong anywhere you want me,” Lance blurts, fervent, and Allura feels a rush of heat deep in her belly, makes a small noise in spite of herself.

“Oh, yes,” she purrs. “Yes, you do.” She drags nails down the seam of his jeans, and he wriggles and lets his legs fall open. “Shoes off in bed, though!” Lance eeps and grabs one of his ankles to pull on his sneakers. “And socks. The rest can come later.”

She grabs the rest of the cuffs off the dresser and closes in on him as he finishes with his footwear.

He’s breathing a little fast as he looks up at her, and there’s a stripe of bare belly where his shirt’s ridden up, and she can see the lean muscles of his stomach clenching as he drags deep breaths.

She drops the cuffs on the mattress next to him with a clatter, picks out one of the smaller ones, and holds out her hand. “Now, you were saying…?”

He blinks, then laughs softly and holds up one wrist, sweet as anything. She pushes up his sleeve a little to cuff him properly, then lets it slide back down. The other wrist. Then she tugs at one knee, and he laughs and lets her drag his legs up so she can cuff his ankles, bent nearly in half like it’s nothing.

He drops his legs back on the mattress, barefoot with the stripes of blue light glowing at his ankles, and folds them cross-legged. “All yours,” he whispers, leashed to her bedstead and grinning with abandon.

Allura takes a moment to drink in the sight. The way the glow of his leash lights his marked face, the way his toes scrunch as he squirms with excitement, the way he jams the heel of his hand into one thigh. He’s still breathing fast, flushed, nervous, but there’s a glittering excitement practically rising off his skin. All hers. Allura wiggles with glee and pounces, losing a pink lion slipper on the way.

Lance lets her bowl him backwards, sprawled full length on top him, and moans softly under her, running hands down her arms with the cuffs dragging against her skin. “All yours,” he breathes again, an inch from her mouth, and she smooths both hands over his face, holds him still, kisses him breathless.

Then she runs her hands down his arms in turn, drags them up to the headboard, and taps the button that will lock his wrists together and tether them to the bedstead.

His breath catches in his throat for a moment, and he squirms under her, eyes wide, and then relaxes with a deep, shuddering sigh.

 

**❇**

 

Lance is—helpless. God, he’s completely helpless. He doesn’t know how the cuffs lock—maybe there _isn’t_ even a key, maybe it’s just Allura’s word or thought or whatever else. The tether won’t budge more than six inches from the headboard even if he puts all his strength into it, and his wrists won’t pull apart, and Allura’s sitting up slowly, straddling him, looking down with some wide-eyed, almost predatory hunger.

There’s raw, blood-hot _feeling_ in his chest, opening up like a flower, and for a moment, he’s breathless. He gives one last strain. Squirms under Allura’s iron-strong thighs clamped around his waist. Then lets go with a sigh like all the air’s been punched out of him.

When he breathes again, he feels boneless, like he’s floating in slow waves under the sun. That’s the feeling in his chest. _Peace_. There’s not a million stray thoughts buzzing under his skin, a thousand worries, a hundred things to do; there’s just Allura, and whatever she wants to do with his body, and bliss.

He’s pretty sure he is giving her the dopiest smile. She’s giving _him_ a dopey smile, certainly, one of those rare ones that crinkles the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Lance,” she says, fond, a hungry light still in her eyes as she runs a hand adoringly down his face.

“Am I in heaven,” Lance manages, voice coming a little slow, “because it hurt when you fell from wait no that’s not how it goes.”

Allura bursts out into a startled laugh and squeezes down around his waist with those terrifying wonderful thighs. “Oh, _Lance_.” She sticks her thumb in his mouth and he hollows his cheeks and sucks on it eagerly, pure reflex. “You like this, then?”

He nods a little, as best as he can with his head stuck between his arms and her hand on his jaw. “Yeah,” he manages around her thumb. “I. I feel. Really good. ’S that weird?”

She smiles fondly and traces his lips with her thumb instead. “No. It’s _you_.”

 

**❇**

 

Allura decides soon enough to take mercy on Lance’s pants by taking them off.

He comes in a handful of ticks, writhing in the cuffs with his usual delightful howl, but afterwards he just melts into his bonds, panting. Usually he gets so embarrassed when she takes the edge off this early, like he’s done something wrong by coming. Now he just takes it, helplessly accepting, and moans as she drags nails down his thighs.

“Mm, come _here_ ,” she says, and untethers his wrists. She sets the leash back to her hand, practically rolls him off the bed onto his knees—after pulling her dressing gown up about her waist and throwing down a pillow, she’s not _mean_ —and guides his face between her legs for payback. He’s muzzy from orgasm, pliable, and moaning eagerly into her cunt. The usual; she hasn’t given much thought to changing form yet, and he’s learned his way around by now. Even, she learns soon enough, with his hands cuffed behind his back. If anything, that makes his moans even more delicious.

She hooks a leg over his shoulders and _basks_. Gives his leash a demanding tug when she needs him to speed up. Lets the waves of pleasure wash over her, orgasm building deep and strong. Time doesn’t matter much like this, after all. Nothing matters but how damn good his tongue feels on her. She comes once, grinding hard against his face, with a shuddering scream that steals her breath away for a while. Then an aftershock, breathless and wild, as he murmurs “yes, yes, god yes” muffled by her folds.

“Good boy,” she pants, dragging fingers through his hair.

He leans back a little, chin dripping, panting with a delirious smile, and looks up at her like she’s the entire universe.

She plays with his mouth as she catches her breath, dragging her thumb over the mark on his lips—still unsmeared, of course, even after this. He’s even more eager than usual, sucking two, three of her fingers down as deep as he can, even cuffed and leashed. Maybe _especially_ cuffed and leashed.

Allura bites her lip against a wicked, wicked idea. She had _maybe_ spent a long while messing around with the Castle’s synthesizers, making whatever struck her fancy, however out there. It was just. Playing, after all. Not that she hadn’t gotten stuck on more than one idea of what might be particularly pretty on Lance, or particularly fun to watch him squirm around, or that he might particularly enjoy.

It would be a lot at once.

He’d probably love it.

He’ll stop her if he doesn’t. She can make sure he has a way. Stars and fire, the _noises_ he’d make…

“Lance,” she asks slowly, dragging her fingers from his eager lips. “Do you remember how we decided you’d signal me if you can’t talk?”

He blinks a few times, like a diver surfacing, and nods. “T…triple knock, yeah? Like an SOS but just the short part?”

She can’t keep her hands off his face, even as she sits up fully so they can talk a little more comfortably, even with him still on his knees between her feet. “I’d very much like to bind your mouth.”

For a moment, he just looks bewildered, and then his eyes widen. “You mean, like…g-gagging me?”

His voice catches on the word. A little tremor runs through him head to toe. She can feel the heat rising off his flushed face.

 _Oh_.

“You will still signal me the moment you need to,” she says, not really making it a question.

He nods a little frantically. She takes his chin in her hand, searches his face for a moment, and if anything he flushes even harder. He’s overcome. Not, she thinks, afraid. And not signaling now, when he can speak, when he so easily could.

“Y-yeah,” he whispers, throat working. “I…yeah, that sounds good, Jesus Hernando Christ, how am I this kinky.”

Allura laughs and kisses his forehead. “The same way anyone is, I imagine. But I’m hardly complaining.”

“Me neither. Really not.”

She passes the glowing tether of his leash to the base of her bed, as much for his benefit as hers, and goes to dig through the pile of synthesized sundries she’d tucked into a bottom drawer. She can feel Lance’s eyes on her, and when she finds her prize and turns back to him, he’s breathing fast and shallow, open-mouthed, running his tongue over his lips. He’s squirming a little, leaning back on his heels for balance, and it’s the first chance she’s had to appreciate how the cuffs drag his shoulders back, put a little arch in his spine.

He takes in what she’s holding, brow furrowing, like he isn’t quite sure what it’s meant to do.

“I hope it’s not too large,” Allura says, settling back down on the edge of the mattress. “I suppose we’ll see. Open your mouth.”

Lance swallows once, hard, face flushed a deep dull red, then opens, obedient.

“Good boy,” Allura murmurs, and savors his subliminal whine, and starts working the ring gag in between his teeth. He makes some garbled, indistinct noise that might have been an _oh fuck_ , and tilts his head back and helps, wiggling his jaw. She pauses before fastening the straps, smoothing her hands over his cheeks and feeling the stretch, dragging a finger over his bottom lip. “Is it too large to be comfortable?”

He looks vaguely thoughtful, and his first try at answering is a voiceless moan. Then the second. There’s nothing to muffle his voice, of course—he can make all the full-throated noises he likes, he just can’t talk cearly. He looks like he isn’t quite sure what to do with his tongue; he runs it around the ring, lets it hang over his bottom lip, and Allura fights the urge to seal the strap and grow herself a cock and fuck his face _right now._

Lance shakes his head hesitantly.

“Comfortable for now and I’ll ask again later?” Allura guesses.

He nods, much less hesitant.

“Good boy,” she says again, and pulls him forward so she can seal the strap snug at the nape of his neck. It’s going to be hard for him to bow his head with his mouth held open like this, she knows, especially with the collar. She’ll have a better angle if she stands. She’ll need to move him away from the bed a little, then, so she has space.

She’ll deal with that in a moment, because right now she needs to drink in the effect. He’s making helpless little noises with almost every breath as his situation sinks in, tongue still hanging over his bottom lip. He struggles against the cuffs, briefly, then goes almost glassy-eyed. The ring’s thin, strong enough to hold his jaw open and light enough to give plenty of access, with a soft rubbery coating to protect his teeth; now that it’s settled, it doesn’t even show that much except for the silver-white straps framing his mouth and running around his head.

“There you go,” she murmurs, reaching out to brush clumps of hair off his forehead. His eyes are huge, almost desperate—well, most people look like that when they’re gagged. She runs her fingers over his tongue—not cold and dry yet, of course, it hasn’t been long enough, and she’s certainly not planning to leave his mouth empty. Then she dips her fingers inside to explore, feeling where his teeth lie with his jaw held open like this. His eyes flutter closed; he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t push towards her either. Pure submission.

“Let’s get you where I can use you,” she says, soft but a little threatening, and his cock twitches and he makes some desperate throaty noise. She releases his wrist cuffs, and he seems almost startled for a moment, then lets his arms dangle. She rises, and his eyes follow her, and she pulls the tether of his collar back to her hand again. And kicks off her other slipper, because that was getting silly.

He makes one fumbling attempt to stand, and she stops him with the shortened leash. “Ssh. Crawl. Just a little.”

He shudders, once, delicious, and leans forward on his hands and knees, and then stops with a strangled noise.

“I know you’re going to drool on the floor. It’s all right. It’s not far.” She nudges the pillow along with one foot. She really only needs him to move a few feet, but—well, this is very nice in and of itself, especially with his bare ass swaying from side to side. “On the pillow, darling. Yes, kneel.” She pets his hair as he settles, looking up at her with awe and adoration. His chin’s already wetter than when she’d gagged him—it’s inevitable with his mouth open like this. There’s a dark spot on the front of his shirt. “Mm, I think it’s time to take this off,” she says, tugging at a fold of fabric on his shoulder, and he peels it off all lithe and shivery, leaving himself naked except for collar and cuffs and gag.

It’s a very nice look for him.

Allura bites her lip for a moment to pace herself and gives herself play in the leash so she can step back and blatantly survey him. Then says, as casually as she can, “You’ll want to spread your knees.”

He obeys, cock bobbing—he's hard again.

She activates the cuffs and locks his wrists to his ankles, trapping him on his knees.

He makes a sudden, surprisingly loud cry, and squirms a little, and falls still again, chest heaving.

“Beautiful,” she whispers, intent, and circles him, just once. She watches the sleek muscles in his back clench, then smooth out as he surrenders to his bonds, scars rippling. She watches his thighs quiver, spread wider as he settles. The leash comes with her, an orbiting line, dropping blue light over his shoulders. He’s moaning with every breath. His ass is wonderfully exposed; if she’d planned this out, she’d have put a toy in him. Or given him something to ride, even better. Next time. “You look perfect like this,” she murmurs, behind him, trailing a fingertip along the side of his throat above his collar. “A perfect—what was it you said that first time? Fucktoy?”

He whines and nods, shaky, eager.

She finishes her circle, and, without closing the distance, casually peels off her dressing gown and lets it puddle at her feet. He drinks in the view like a starving man, tongue flickering along the inside of his gag. Only then does she step closer and take him by the face, thumb hooked around the inside of the ring and palm splayed over his cheek.

“Hm…let’s see.” He moans and runs his tongue over her thumb. There’s already drool shining on his chest. Something to hang from his nipples next time, perhaps. It’s a distant thought, easily dismissed. Mostly Allura’s mind is clear, focused, at peace. Stars and fire, she’s missed this. Playing at her whim, drinking in his every reaction—it’s almost a trance of its own.

She fingers his mouth, almost absentmindedly, swirling and pumping in and out as if it were another sort of orifice, as she considers what form to take. Then concentrates, hand stilling as she grows a cock. Much like his, really. Sensitive, especially on the underside, narrow enough to fit easily through the ring, long enough to test his gag reflex. He won’t be able to use his mouth quite like usual, after all. She gives the tethers between his wrists and ankles a little play, and he makes a vague curious noise around her fingers. At least until she takes one step closer and carefully threads a leg between his elbow and his hip, leaving it within very easy reach of his hand.

“Tap my ankle if you’re choking,” she tells him pleasantly, and dials his leash very short. Between that and the fistful of hair in her other hand, she has absolute control of his head—he’ll need the chance to signal, he won’t be able to pull back.

Lance makes a delicious, welcoming groan as she feeds her cock into his bound mouth. She keeps it shallow at first, letting him work her with his tongue as best he can. It’s messy, uncoordinated, very wet. He can’t give her much pressure or suction like this, but the open-throated, garbled noises are utterly delicious. He clings to her calf like a drowning man, but no tapping. Even when she tightens her grip in his hair and slowly, _almost_ gently, drags his face forward. She _could_ move her hips, she supposes, but he’s being a fucktoy right now, she can use him like one.

He gags once, a little, shoulders heaving against his bonds, and then works through it. Allura can feel his throat starting to grab at the head of her cock, and moves him around a little for a better angle—the other reason she gave him some play—and then his head tilts back just so and she slides down his throat.

For a few ticks, they’re both still, just so. Allura feels her thigh tremble against him, throws her head back and moans with abandon. It’s _tight_ , dizzyingly tight, suck-her-soul-out-through-her-cock tight. Lance’s throat works hard around her cock, once, twice, and she pulls him off—not all the way out, enough to let him breathe. He gasps, bright blue eyes turned up to her face, watering a little and awe-struck. She lets go of his hair, pets his head, though she’s still holding him on her cock by his leash.

“There you go,” she purrs. “Just like that. Good toy.”

He whines around her cock, face flushing, and presses her deeper.

From there, they find the rhythm. Deep until they both start to shake, then telling him how good he’s being and petting his hair and letting him work her with his tongue in between. It’s a little slow; it has to be. He’s not used to this yet, and she’s being careful not to come down his throat—far too easy to choke him, between the collar and the gag. But _quiznak_ , it’s rhapsodic. So close to coming every time she slides deep—it hasn’t even been that long but she feels like she’s crawling out of her skin, can’t handle being this close to the edge, can’t handle…

Lance makes a strangled noise around her and jolts in his bonds, and she pulls out nearly all the way, locks eyes with him, and whispers, “tongue out.”

He obeys with a pleading sort of noise, and she finishes herself off in a few strokes, slick with the thick spit from the back of his throat, so wet it’s dripping down her balls. Stripes of blueish-white to paint his cheekbones, jaw, some inside his gaping mouth, and he licks those up, does his best to swallow. He looks practically drugged, entranced, abandoned to her.

She pats his cheek, dragging her thumb through her cooling come, and murmurs, “Shall I keep going, pet?”

He nods, eager and heedless.

“Does your jaw hurt?”

He makes some thin open-mouthed whine and shakes his head with a shrug. She smiles and slides three fingers knuckle-deep in his mouth, muzzy-headed from her orgasm, and wonders absently what form to take next. He moans as she spreads her hand and runs fingers over the inside of his cheeks…can she fill him up like this, she thinks, really fill him up, he’s so eager for it, except it would need to fit through the ring…

“Mm, here we go.” She closes her eyes for a moment, focusing. It’s not the easiest shift: this is a complicated bit of quiznak, different from what she’s used to, but it will, she thinks, be very fun like this. Lance watches her hazy-eyed, panting through his open mouth, eyebrows canting in curiosity. It’s less like a cock than a tightly closed flower bud, a cluster of overlapping pink petals a little shorter than the width of her palm.

Allura palms her new appendage carefully, shivering—she’s still a little sensitive, even in this new form. “It’s soft now. You’ll need to get me aroused again.” He keens and wiggles his hips. “It won’t get longer when it engorges. Your throat can have a rest.” She pets the front of his neck fondly. “But it’ll spread out. Fill you up tight. It’ll be locked inside the ring until I finish.” His eyes widen. “If you need to stop, I’ll unseal the gag, and we’ll be able to pop it out that way.” And she’d have a ridiculous impromptu cock ring until she comes or softens, but there are far worse outcomes. She cards fingers through his hair. “Are you ready, dear pet?”

Lance moans an _uh-uh_ and nods, clinging to her leg for dear life.

Allura smiles, sweet and sharp. “Good boy.” She drags her thumb a little roughly across his bottom lip, nudges his tongue back inside, and feeds herself in. She goes a little slowly and carefully—it’s a snug fit, and the soft and sensitive petals don’t much like being shoved against the grain. She even stops for a moment to wet her fingers inside his mouth and get herself a little slicker—and the noise he makes at that is nigh-indescribable, desperate and humiliated and yearning all at once.

When she’s sunk to the base, she stops, settles, and pets his hair. No balls in this form. No pubic hair; instead there’s a smattering of feathery white petals framing the bud. They’re silky soft, she knows, and smell a little sweet. Quite pleasant to have one’s nose buried in. His breath is a faint tickle.

His tongue traces her petals, exploring, and she brushes his bangs off his damp forehead and hears herself let out a long trembling sigh. “Just like that,” she breathes. “Softly at first. Good boy.” The first shivers of pleasure, coiling; it’s a wonderfully sensitive form, almost as if he’s exploring the folds of her own cunt. She doesn’t stop running hands through his hair, over his face, down the back of his neck. Streaking the come drying on his face, playing with his ears. He makes soft little noises that vibrate around her, leave her shuddering as blood pools in her petals. He kneads her calf softly, giving her all the affection he can even bound like this.

The gag _is_ a bit of a cock ring, really, catching her at the base, making her swell a little faster. The petals might be starting to open, she thinks—and then Lance’s tongue finds the sensitive inside of one and she gasps, spine tingling. “G-gently,” she gasps. “Don’t pry.”

He hums in answer, working away with obedient care, and rumbling in satisfaction every time she gives a full-body shudder over him. Which is a very nice feedback loop. She clutches his shoulder, tremors running through her body. She blooms. _Gods_ , she’d forgotten how good this form feels. Pleasure building slow and sweet and inexorable low in her belly, rich and languid. She’s moaning, low and shaky, on each breath—she can’t help herself.

Lance has turned his eyes up to her, huge and entranced, even as his cheeks bulge with swollen petals. She runs her fingers over one cheek, probing gently, _feeling_ herself inside him. He’s making tiny, stunned little noises around his mouthful, nostrils flaring. She traces his cheekbone, right next to his nose. “Still breathing?”

“Mmnuh,” Lance moans softly, and squeezes her ankle. He’s so far gone that it takes him a few moments to start exploring, tongue wandering until he finds the sensitive, spongy mass at the center.

“Oh, ruggle me,” Allura gasps, clutching the back of his head to ride out a surge of pleasure so intense it leaves her feeling watery head to toe. She’s hunched over him a little, shaking. “Oh gods, Lance. Stop that for a moment. I—I need to sit down, I can’t fall down on you, that would be bad.”

Lance makes some incomprehensible noise around her, but she thinks she catches satisfaction in his eyes, even as he obediently keeps his tongue off her core. She strokes his hair, tells him he’s a good boy, tries to remember through sheer drowning pleasure how to coax the chair in front of her dresser to float their way. It’s a good thing, really, that Altean technology is so responsive, given that she’s mostly waving one hand at it and whining.

“And don’t _you_ laugh at me,” she says to Lance, who just hums low and deep around her with the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Move with me. Carefully…”

She settles, makes sure he still has her leg, can still breathe. The moment she’s still, Lance flicks his tongue once, feather-light, over her core, and she _squeaks_.

“Yes, yes—now _behave_ —”

Lance behaves. Mostly by going at her properly, muffled moans vibrating through her petals, slick and gentle and _perfect_.

 

**❇**

 

Lance has absolutely no idea how long he’s there, cuffed on his knees, face stuffed full, but it doesn’t matter, because every gasping cry he gets out of Allura with a soft flick of his tongue is an entire choir of angels. He’s in some sort of trance. Everything is clear and light. There’s the rhythm he has to breathe in to handle the petal that’s pressing against the roof of his mouth, and the pressure on his cheeks that’s almost painful but somehow delicious, and damned if he knows why having his mouth crammed full like this feels so good, but it does. Holy fuck it does. There’s Allura’s hand in his hair and her thigh quivering against his ear and her wails of ecstasy, and Lance answers every one of them with a muffled groan of his own. He’s so hard he can feel his cock slapping his stomach and he’s pretty much mindlessly humping air, even if all it’s giving him is a burn in his thighs.

“Finish yourself,” Allura manages between moans. “I want—nnnaaagghhhh—to hear you moaning around me as you—haahhh—come.”

It honestly takes Lance a few moments of wiggling vaguely in his cuffs to realize why there’s a problem with that, and by the time he’s getting there, Allura’s convinced the tether between his right wrist and ankle to spool out a little. He can’t reach his face, but he can reach his cock, and even catch a bit of the mess of drool and come all over his chest to ease the way.

Orgasm hits him like a freight train in about five ticks flat, with a wet and strangled howl around his bulging mouthful, and Allura’s fingers dig possessively into the back of his skull, and he realizes she’s looking down at him with a wild light in her eyes. Their gazes lock. He can’t look away. She palms his cheek, pressing against herself from the outside. “Good boy,” she whispers, fervent.

Lance whines around her, whole body thrumming with desperate satisfaction at the praise, eyes prickling. The cuff pulls his wrist back where it belongs, leaving his cock messy with come.

“Now don’t stop,” Allura breathes.

Lance doesn’t stop. If anything, he falls even deeper into that delicious haze now that he’s muzzy-headed after orgasm. The insides of her petals are starting to taste a little different, tangy-sweet. The core is swelling too, bit by bit, pressing against his tongue, and he can taste beads of intensely flavored _something_ dripping slowly out of its countless little folds. Its incredibly sensitive folds. Allura _howls_ every time one of them squeezes out a drop onto Lance’s tongue, and the sound runs through his veins like he’s riding the wake of her pleasure. Is it like dozens of intense little orgasms? He’s not quite sure. But her thighs are quivering around his ears, her toes are curling desperately. She’s got one hand on the edge of the chair, white-knuckled, like she’s trying to anchor herself so she doesn’t wrench his neck, and then the rest of her’s a squirming mess.

He’s not sure how long it takes for all those drops to squeeze out on his tongue. It doesn’t matter. His jaw’s starting to ache and his thighs burn and his mouth’s sloppy and Allura’s in heaven and so is he.

“E…easy…” she gasps, smoothing a hand through his hair.

“Mmnuh,” he answers faintly. The sweet droplets are slowing down. He can’t quite tell if she’s softening or if he’s getting used to having his face stuffed full.

“Getting…sensitive…” she gasps. Maybe she _is_ softening—there’s less pressure against the roof of his mouth. He eases up on her core, slowly, carrying her through a few aftershocks as she sags over him, sweaty and smiling deliriously. Her petals thin, pull back in, and Lance gives each one of them a parting touch with his tongue, and watches Allura bask above him, and lolls limply on his knees as she pets him.

Eventually, slowly, she eases out, and he finally surfaces from between her legs, rocks slowly back on his heels with a groan as his legs register their complaints. He’s sticky with come and drool, wrecked, mouth still gaping. She slumps forward after a few moments, stroking his face, then flops over him for a sort of hug, sweat-damp and skin-hot and perfect.

“Good boy,” she breathes. “Good, good, good sweet boy.”

He moans into her shoulder as the praise runs through him.

“Ready for me to take this off?” she murmurs, tracing the strap of his gag.

He whines softly. _Christ_ he’s kinky, he’s loving this, loving being speechless and spread open, even loving his own mangled, heedless noises. But his jaw’s tired and he wants to kiss her too, and he nods, and she strokes her thumb down the back of the strap and pries the ring carefully from between his teeth.

He groans as he closes his mouth, works his jaw a little, swallows. She gives some play to his cuffs—maybe a lot, he can't tell—and pulls him between her legs to cuddle.

“You’ve done very, very well,” she murmurs. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m gooood,” he manages. God, he’s hoarse. He’s hoarse from Allura’s dick down his throat. How is his life so perfect? “I’m good thank you, thank you, I wanna be good for you, I wanna make you feel good.” It’s coming out in a blur; he’s barely even thinking about it, but it’s so true it hurts.

“I know, darling. And you are.” She curls down to kiss the top of his head. “You’ve certainly earned a reward.” She laughs, soft and warm. “Though depending upon what you ask for, I might need a rain check.”

“Oh man.” Lance turns his head to kiss the inside of her thigh, still smelling faintly of flower-sweet. “Oh wow.” It’s— _not_ easy to wear out Allura, he learned that much already. “I…a-anything?”

“Anything I’m willing to grant.”

He’s too muzzy to _think_. He’s still loosely bound, head spinning—that had felt so _right_ somehow, so deep-down satisfying to be used like that, stray thoughts driven out of his buzzing brain, nothing to do but obey and give pleasure. And be _used_. He wants…he wants…

“S…something in my ass?” he manages, tongue thick.

“Oh _no_ ,” Allura says, teasing. “What a difficult reward. What kind of something, darling? Would a single finger satisfy you? A light touch?”

Lance whines in the back of his throat, swallows hard, feeling his face heat. “I…mmore…” He _knows_ he’s asked—well, begged—more eloquently in the past, but he’s already so out of his head. “F…fill me up…please, stuff me full, use my ass like you used my mouth…”

Allura smiles sweetly and teases Lance’s well-used lips with just a fingertip. “But my quiznak’s all tired out,” she mock-pouts.

“Then…w-whatever you want, whatever works…”

“Oh, that’s a dangerous thing to tell a girl,” she says lightly. “You might get more than you bargained for. Do you want to come clean up with me? Or should I just flip you face-down and take you all messy?”

“Nnnnn…both, both is good.”

“Can’t do both.” She tweaks his ear. “Let’s get you up and back to bed.” The anchors on his cuffs power down, and she gets them both to their wobbly feet. His collar’s still leashed to her hand, but he barely notices; he’s leaning on her a little. She drops him sprawling on his back on her bed, leashes him to the headboard, and crawls over him to kiss him, deep and slow and tender. Tasting herself, Lance realizes. Three different forms of herself. The thought’s dizzying.

She gets them both water to drink after that, and Lance finishes half a pouch in one gulp. And she mops off the biggest spots of drying come, probably  more for the sake of her sheets than anything.

Then she tilts her head, studying him, and rolls to her feet to rummage on her dresser for something.

“Nnm…?” Lance, sprawled and still breathless, wriggles up on his elbows a little, blinking.

“I think I want to mark you more.” She comes back with a familiar blue applicator in hand, and Lance feels a little coil of excitement in his gut.

“More…social markings?”

“Oh, no,” she says brightly, and flops on top of him, bare breasts against his chest. “Just for fun. All my favorite parts of you.” He sags back with a little gasp as she runs her fingers down the inside of one arm. Her touch is like fire; he’s drowning, aching for her. “Like this long line of muscle right here…”

She sets to work. His arms. The dip above his collarbone. Swirls around his nipples, with little tweaks once they’re marked and dried, coaxing them to stand to attention among the decorations. A trailing accent around his belly button. Graceful curves over the cut of his hips.

“Mm, this will have to wait,” she murmurs, kissing his soft cock, and he can’t help a breathless moan. Which trails into a more startled one as she spreads his legs with both hands, applicator tucked between her knuckles, nearly into a full straddle-split. “And this tendon that stands out, right here at the top of your leg. I love how flexible you are.”

“Ahhh fuck,” Lance breathes, entranced. The faintly cool touch of wet ink high on the most sensitive part of his thigh. Then she works down his legs, highlighting long lean muscles, finishing with a swirl even on the balls of his feet.

“Do you want to do me?” she asks, voice light and teasing, as she runs her hands back up over the dried ink, loose hair brushing like silk over his leg.

“I dunno,” Lance manages. “How much pink do you have? Because I’d have to paint every inch of you.”

Allura actually squeaks, blushing. “You are such a sap! So cheeky!” She pounces, catches his collar in her free hand, and kisses him like she wants to devour him. Lance moans heedlessly into her mouth, yields to her. There’s already some renewed stirring belowdecks, even the third time that night. Especially when her tongue thickens, lengthens, just about _fucking_ Lance’s mouth, and that should be freaky, but he is way, way beyond freaking out. It just feels good. Holy shit.

Then she lifts her head, tongue returning to normal, and catches him by the chin, squeezing and forcing his mouth open. “So cheeky,” she murmurs, a demanding light in her eyes.

The applicator traces his lips.

Lance feels his ears burn, and stretches his lips with abandon. Her favorite parts. Beyond royal companion and into—fucktoy, absolute fucktoy. She doesn’t stop until his lips are solid blue. He doesn’t close his eyes this time, because god, he’s enjoying this. Her face so close that he can feel the heat of her breath, intent, possessive.

“I’m yours,” Lance whispers, voice ragged, when she’s done. “Yours, yours…”

She cards her fingers lovingly through his hair, fists, pulls until he moans. Then she lets go and dips them into his mouth, coaxing out his tongue.

“Hold still,” she breathes.

A single swipe of the applicator. A blue line down the center of his tongue, like a goddamn arrow. It tastes a little thick and sour, tingles as it dries. Lance hears himself make a strangled groan. It’s like she’s painted that open-mouthed gag right onto his skin. Lips wide, tongue out, ready to be used. He’s never gonna be able to think of lipstick the same way again.

“Mine,” she whispers, fervent, and kisses his—forehead, god help him, warm and tender. Lance whines. “All mine.” She strokes his hair again, kisses his mouth, and he drowns in it, cock stirring against her thigh.

It feels like hours until she lets up, and when she does, Lance is grinning like a dope, reaching up for her cheek, her shoulder, any of her that he can touch.

“Turn over,” she whispers, soft and sweet. “I’m not done with you.”

Lance shivers with want and rolls over almost clumsily, belly tightening with arousal. She drags her hands down his arms and shoulders, arranging him on the bed. Then light flares from the cuffs on his wrists, linking them to the bedframe and reeling taut, leaving him with his arms spread wide. He squirms, breathless, and she lets him—makes little pleased noises, even, and runs fingernails down his spine. “There, there,” she murmurs, fond, even as one iron-strong hand demandingly parts his thighs.

Lance just about stops thinking. It’s like some deep, _deep_ knot of _something_ is easing out inside him, like being cuffed face-down with his ass exposed is coming home after years away, filling some aching need he didn’t even know he had.

Then the mattress dips and Allura’s warm, solid weight settles between his legs, trapping them spread wide.

“Fuck,” Lance breathes, wriggling around her.

“Oh, I will,” she says brightly. “But first…mm, your shoulders look lovely like this.” The applicator follows her words, tracing patterns round his shoulderblades. “And the line of your backbone.” Two long thin strokes, just to either side of his spine. “Those two little dimples right at the top of your ass.” A swirl for each of those, like the ones around his nipples. “Do hold still now—you wouldn’t want this to be asymmetrical, would you?”

Lance makes a faintly disgruntled noise and shakes his head against the sheets.

“Good,” she murmurs, and he whines with how much he wants to be everything for her. She rearranges herself a little, dragging his hips up, and he scoots his knees up to help, pliant, eager. It leaves him with his thighs splayed wide across her lap, ass in the air, incredibly exposed, and she pulls his cheeks open, drags the applicator down for a line of color that would probably, he think, just barely show above his crack if he was standing. Right down to a circle round his asshole for a claim so blatant that he buries his face in the mattress and murmurs “yes” and “please,” dim and overwhelmed and probably inaudible.

She keeps going. A mark down his t’aint, then a firm press of her knuckles right in the spot that makes him groan helplessly, ass making little figure eights in her lap. She holds his balls gently for a stripe between them, and he goes very still for that, dizzy from how much he trusts her.

Then she sets the applicator aside. Reaches for something else. He’s not sure what—he can’t see much beyond the sheets he’s lying on, the base of her headboard. Helpless and spread open for her. She’s shifting, leaning over his back.

“Lift up your head for me, darling,” she breathes in his ear. “Yes, like that.”

Something folds over his eyes.

It’s soft and heavy and doesn’t put any pressure on his eyelids. He can open his eyes. There’s just—nothing but darkness.

“Oh my god,” he whispers. “Oh my god.”

“Too much?”

“No…no…” It’s perfect. He’s trembling against her. She wraps the blindfold around his head, seals it, though he doesn’t quite realize it until she smoothes both cool hands down his shoulders and settles back down between his legs and he still can’t see. He tests the cuffs once with a ragged moan and shudder, not really meaning to—it’s like this strange gut instinct to make sure this is real.

“Ssshhh,” Allura soothes, even as her hands spread his ass cheeks, possessive. “I’ve got you. You’re not going anywhere.”

Lance sags boneless against her, all the breath running out of him. Surrender. Absolute, delicious, surrender.

Something slick teases his exposed asshole. Finger-sized. Smooth. Lance whimpers, too overwhelmed to even squirm against her hands, just accepting it.

Her…hands?

Whatever’s teasing him presses inside, slow and firm, just a dip at first. No burn, no friction, barely even any resistance. Lance opens for it with a moan, blind and helpless and not even sure what it is. Another stroke over his hole, spreading slick. Lance buries his face in the mattress and groans.

Then, inexorable, it presses back in. Deeper. And it’s like tipping over the first hill of a roller coaster.

 

**❇**

 

Allura had _maybe_ been misleading him, a little, about her quiznak. Which is to say, another string of orgasms like _that_ might actually knock her out, but not all forms are equally sensitive. The mating tendrils of a R’xxquanoth, for example—over a dozen finger-fine strands, each as sensitive as your average clitoris—would break her brain if she used them now, writhing slick against each other in the tight heat of Lance’s ass. But the Karkosen, a similar species, have much more aggressive sexual practices, so their tendrils are much less sensitive, more like extra fingers, given that they grapple foes with them. And they have this lovely tendency to thicken when they get excited. Lance wouldn’t be able to secrete the pheromones that could trigger an orgasm in this form, and other nights that might be frustrating, but she’s more than satisfied by now.

The shift was a little draining, especially after growing her flower earlier. But the noises Lance makes as the first dripping tendril slides deeper, longer and more flexible than her finger could possibly be, are worth it.

“…lu…lura?” he manages, ass squirming a little in her lap as he no doubt wonders what’s happening to him.

“It’s me,” she say soothingly, running both hands down his thighs and pinning him in place. “It’s all me.” He goes boneless again with a little whine. “I’ve got you, darling. I’m going to give you exactly what you begged me for.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, setting aside the delicious view of her wrecked lover so she can concentrate on the sensations from her new-grown tendrils, foreign to her nervous system. There—there’s that sensitive spot. She pulses against it, and he groans like all the air’s been punched out of him.

She opens her eyes and runs another tendril round the rim of his hole, teasing. He’s mumbling nonsense into the mattress, barely even words. So high he’s in orbit, and she’s barely getting started.

His thighs quiver as she presses the second tendril inside, and that sends then stirring, curling in instinctive excitement. There are nine—which makes her very poorly endowed by Karkosen standards, but it’s more than enough to fuck him silly with, and it’s easier to make fewer. They’re exploring him, clinging. She can guide them, but they have their preferences, and she certainly doesn’t mind letting two wrap around the tops of his thighs, holding his pelvis possessively tight so he can’t so much as grind. Another pair find fun dangling bits to grab, and she keeps those gentle and savors the _oh god oh god oh god_ he babbles as they snug around his cock and balls.

The rest, though—the rest want _in_.

Allura purrs in satisfaction as Lance trembles in her lap, occasionally batting a tendril out of the way as she opens him up, murmuring sweet nothings about how good a boy he’s been, how he’s earned this, how he begged her to stuff him full and she’s going to give him everything he asked for and more. The tendrils are thickening, too—they’ll be almost double their diameter when they’re done. Even five will probably be more than he’s ever taken like this. He’s at three now; his thighs are jelly, and the ring of muscle she’s spreading open gives the occasional flutter as it relaxes further. He’s like a limp rag, barely moving, but the noises he’s making are unearthly, low and wavering moans that last as long as he has air. There’s a tendril coiling against his prostate, a tendril pressed as deep as she dares let it go, and a tendril outright fucking him, dragging against the others and opening him wider.

The fourth starts nudging at his rim, and he spasms and kicks, and she runs a hand down his thigh. “Ssshhh. Ssshhhh, my darling. You can’t fight this. Just let me in.”

He groans and shakes, muzzily pleading into the mattress for _something_ , but he can’t even seem to figure out what. She activates his ankle cuffs and fusses with the tether settings for a bit, smoothing her free hand over the small of his back, until she’s gotten his legs pinned in place, almost no wiggle room, ankles locked down and thighs spread obscenely wide. He’s a champion squirmer, she’s noticed—shaking it off is part of how he manages intense sensations. He also sinks into ecstatic surrender any time he’s bound. Sure enough, he goes limp again, another level of resistance falling away as he opens for the fourth tendril with devastating ease. And when he can’t kick and squirm, he howls instead, shameless and ecstatic.

“I’ve got you,” she purrs. “I’ve got you.”

He babbles syllables that don’t make words, not even in his other language that the translator glitches on occasionally, though a goodly number of them seem to be _yes yes yes yes yes_. Mostly he wails. He’s intensely hard—she can feel it through the tendrils wrapped around his dick—but she knows it won’t be easy for him to come with his balls held like this. Which is just as well. She wants this to last, even though it’s getting late and she’s sinking into a pleasant daze of her own, feeling him clench blood-hot around her, drinking in his noises.

It’s a while until she lets the fifth one in, slipping it between the four already writhing inside him, and he barely seems to notice the additional stretch at first, not with how much he’s howling because of the others fucking him in long, merciless strokes. She runs a hand down his spine, murmuring honey-sweet and soothing nonsense as she destroys him.

“Is this full enough for you, pet? Mmm, you’re taking me so beautifully. So pretty, so willing. You’re stretched so wide I could fit my hand in you.” He shudders at that, stunned. “Oh, yes. You asked me to stuff you full, after all. You’re doing so well, I could use you like this all night long…” Nonsense. Mix-and-match. He laps it up, moaning without end, cock twitching against the tendril coiling around it. “You can come any time you want, darling. You’ve earned this.”

He’s on the brink, she’s pretty sure. She can feel what seems like a false start, tugging at the tendril wrapped around his balls, and his cries are getting breathless, ragged, fine tremors running through his limbs. She keeps the tendrils on his cock and balls right where they are, holding him snug, and focuses on the ones inside, angling them towards his prostate. They’re subtly ridged, quite strong. Enough stimulation to make him scream on every breath, shaking under her like a leaf as pleasure washes through him. Another false start, teetering on the brink, balls clenching.

She manages to hold him there for a few long, achingly gorgeous moments.

He tips over, falls towards orgasm with a howl like she’s never heard from him. It’s not a particularly messy one, given his previous exertions, but it _lasts_ , a string of long, spiraling spasms. He’s clenching down around her so hard that she slips one tendril out immediately so he doesn’t hurt himself, and she keeps coaxing his prostate with another to carry him through it, and gods, it’s satisfying. So very satisfying.

“Oh god,” he moans as he falls limp. “Oh god oh god oh wow…”

“Mmm,” she purrs in agreement, and slowly eases another tendril out, petting his back and thighs as he lolls in his post-orgasmic haze. His hole’s twitching as she pulls out, oversensitive, like suddenly being empty is almost too much, so she works with care, letting him close up gradually. The tendrils are still clingy, but she pries them off him with focus—they’ll stay that way until she shapeshifts them away. Two left. One, and she lets his ankles go, and he doesn’t even stretch or rearrange himself, just lets his legs flop like he doesn’t have the energy to move.

Maybe he doesn’t. That’s fine. Allura murmurs soothingly to him, eases her last tendril out, and watches his well-used hole wink and close as she strokes his thighs. He groans softly as she rearranges herself, letting his legs fall closed. “…lura…?”

“I’m right here, darling.” She frees his wrists with a wave of her hand, and he shifts a little then, just a little, molasses-slow. She wills her tendrils to keep to themselves a little longer and starts bundling him up with gentle care, rolling him over slowly and pulling him bodily into her lap for cuddles. Only when he’s settled, wrapping loosely around her with a delirious, dopey smile on his face, does she take the time to focus and shift back.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, burying his face in her shoulder. “Thank you…”

“Thank _you_ ,” she says warmly, kissing the top of his head. “You were an utter delight.” She strokes the side of his face over the blindfold. “Do you think you’ll fall right asleep—would you like to keep this on?” He’s spent the night a few times by now, and she’s noted his habit of sleeping blindfolded and with either his headphones on or his ears plugged—it’s remarkably cute, and has given her the stray mischievous thought more than once.

“Mmnnn,” he says, then, eventually, “Wanna…see you.”

“Of course,” she says, and peels it carefully off his face. He winces at the light, focuses on her, and looks even more blissfully happy.

“Best…girl inna uuverse,” he slurs, and wraps around her a little tighter.

Eventually, she thinks, she’ll unlock the collar and cuffs, once he’s come down enough that taking off the collar won’t hurt him. And either carry him to the bath or grab the sonic cleaner by the bedstead to do the bulk of cleanup if he just dozes off. Which he might well. He shivers a little, and she pulls up one of her silky-soft sheets around him, wraps him up. He’s _radiating_ bliss, it feels like it’s pouring off of him in waves, and for a moment she closes her eyes and buries her face in his hair and basks in him, just as he’s basking in her. So happy it aches. They both—needed this. So much.

They stay like that, clinging close, babbling quietly about how incredible that had all been, for a long, long while. Long enough that Lance in fact almost dozes off in her arms. The sonic cleaner, Allura thinks dimly, and rearranges him just a little, and reaches to unlock one cuff with her fingerprint. Then the rest.

He makes some dim, sleepy noise and catches her hand as she moves to the lock on the nape of his neck. Brings it to his mouth to kiss her knuckles, soft and sweet. “This…a-again?” he whispers.

“Again,” she says, and kisses his forehead. “Promise.”

She wonders, from the look in his eyes, if he’s as wistful as she is when the collar falls away from his neck.


	6. Tested

 

**PART 6 ❇   TESTED**

 

After that night, the floodgates open. Not that they have the time and energy for that kind of play every time—far from it—but when they do, stars and fire, they _play_.

There’s the time Allura gets the rope—real rope, not space rescue line, soft and flexible and still strong enough by far—and discovers that even stone cold sober, Lance blisses out like he’s drugged as soon as she starts wrapping him up, and then she sits on his face for what feels like hours. He practically begs for it sometimes after that—the challenge of a strict tie that tests his flexibility and leaves him shuddering in the ropes, or the bliss of a snug comfortable harness and a long cuddle.

There’s the time she does him up with his arms lashed behind him, his nipple clamps tied to the headboard, one of his big toes tied to his balls, and the other bent up behind him and tied to his shoulder so that if he relaxes it, it pulls back on his chest and puts strain on the clamps. And every time she palms his cock and breaks his concentration, the writhing and squirming chain reaction goes on for at _least_ a dobosh.

There’s the time that he slaps the mag-anchor for his gym rope on her ceiling and does all his tricks naked and marked and dusted in glitter and Allura takes pictures. And some film clips, but she discovers she likes the still pictures more because it’s an excuse to make him hold the hardest poses until he’s trembling and breathing hard while she gets the perfect shot. And then it turns into him playing with himself as she films him one-handed, shivering as he obediently curls his hand just so, or fingers himself open, or rolls onto his back and almost, _almost_ gets the tip of his cock in his own mouth before she takes pity and pushes his legs down.

 

**❇**

 

Then there’s the time Allura asks very reasonably if she can try a bit of an experiment on him, then explains that she’s been messing around with the castle’s synthesizers to make something that will change how he orgasms and recovers from it. Just temporarily, of course. Just as long as he’s wearing it.

Lance is pretty sure his eyes bug out of his head at the idea, but like hell he’s backing down from something like _that_. Even if it’s a little scary when it’s a heavy, glow-striped ring of metal round the base of his cock, almost like a miniature magcuff, latching together with a solid click behind his balls. One part of it extends like a steel tongue, pressing gentle but unyielding at the tender skin trailing down to his ass. He’s naked when Allura puts it on, kneeling on her bed, and he’s breathing a little fast, can’t stop himself from reaching down to feel it, tug at his hardening cock.

“Is it uncomfortable?” Allura asks fondly, trailing her hand over his, feeling how it neatly presents his balls. He shudders deliciously under her touch, spreads his thighs a little, feels his face heat.

“N…no. Like. It’s definitely a thing, I can feel it’s there, but not. Bad.” He swallows. “Actually pretty nice.”

“Good,” she purrs, and then latches something on a fine chain around his neck. It looks like a tiny glowing blue pendant. “The key. Tap that twice and it’ll release. Until then, if it’s working properly with your anatomy, you won’t be able to ejaculate.”

Lance swallows again, harder, and touches the pendant, just once, to make sure it’s there. “I thought you said I’d still come…?”

“In many species like yours, orgasm and ejaculation are not necessarily always linked.” It’s a testament, Lance thinks, to how devastatingly gorgeous and sexy Allura is, that she can say something like _that_ while running her hands possessively over his thighs and it feels like dirty talk instead of a textbook. “This will let you have the first while preventing you from the second. If it works right, you won’t have your usual recovery period.”

“I’ll just…keep going?” Lance blurts. Yeah, eyes definitely bugging out of his head.

“That’s the idea,” Allura says brightly. “Though I’d love to test it before we really get started.”

“Fair enough.” Lance smiles, spreads his arms. “Anything in particular you got in mind, or should I just jerk off?”

“Oh, I want to have a little fun~!” Allura drags her hands back up over his hips, stomach, chest. The half-gloves of her spacesuit are slick and cool on his skin—right, she hasn’t undressed yet, she’d jumped straight to getting him stripped and done up with this new toy. Lance feels an odd quiver of excitement, being naked while she’s wrapped up neck to toe, the same vacuum-proof suit she wears on the bridge every day. It’s sparking off wild little fantasies of being naked and leashed at her feet while she flies the Castle, which, okay, not even the first time he’s had those, but they’re a lot more compromisingly concrete now. “Lie back,” Allura says, low and full of promise, and Lance grins, lets her shove him down on the bed.

She coils between his sprawled legs and wraps one hand round the base of his bound cock, and that’s about all the warning he gets before she quite literally blows his brain. The ridges and layers of her suit press against his bare skin, and she’s still got her hair up and her sparkly flower and her com earrings on, and the way she ducks her head to swallow him down is almost _casual_ , which somehow makes it even hotter. Lance moans, scrabbles at the sheets and the ridge of lightstrip and armor on her shoulder. Gag reflexes are for non-shapeshifting squares, after all. So is having just one size of tongue. She knows well by now that she can reduce him to incoherent groans in about ten seconds flat like this, especially if he’s all revved up and this is the first round of the day.

“Don’t hold back,” she whispers as she pulls back for a moment, breath hot against the wet head of his cock, and splays a hand on his hip to keep him from fucking her face too much.

“I—couln iffi tried,” Lance gasps, and then loses it entirely as she sinks back down and _something_ in there wraps around him like an entire second set of lips, dragging and swirling. He can feel his orgasm building already, and okay, he could feel this forever and die happy, but that is kind of not the point right now. Maybe later. Holy shit.

Lance squeezes his eyes shut and feels nothing but Allura’s mouth on him and lets every bit of control fly out the window.

The orgasm hits him fast and hard, and the ring _squeezes_ at the base of his cock, and there’s a strange, strangled rush of pleasure. He feels himself pulsing in her mouth, feels the sparks down his spine, hears himself howl, but he doesn’t feel himself come, not like usual. No jizz. No triumphant relief, just surges of sensation.

“God in heaven Jesus fuck,” Lance croaks.

She pulls off slowly, runs her hand gently over his full balls and up his wet cock, and he groans and shudders beneath her. “Lance…?”

“I-I think it worked,” he manages, catching his breath. He cants himself up on his elbows, heart racing, and looks down at his dick with curiosity and fear. It’s still hard, red and wanting; she gives him a slow, firm stroke, and he shudders full-body. “H-holy shit sensitive!”

“Like after you come normally?”

“Yes,” he says, shaky. She’s _way_ too fond of that part, he’s noticed, of how she can wring out a last few delicious cries even as he’s winding down. She’s a very mean princess. It’s good.

“Did it make your climax uncomfortable?” she asks, even as she thoughtfully does just that with another stroke to his oversensitive dick.

“Nnnstrange. Not. Painful or anything.” He chews his lip for a moment. “I-I think if I don’t, like, come like normal at the end, I might get really frustrated?”

She nods. “Are you tiring like usual?”

“I…I don’t think so?” He struggles to catch his breath. “I’ll know better in a few minutes, maybe? But I’m not feeling all floppy.”

“Neither is this,” she says, giving his dick a fond squeeze.

He grins, a bit dopey. “Yeah, Lance Jr. is going strong.”

“Why must you call it that,” she groans, rolling off his legs. “Whyyy.”

“I _must_.” He wiggles around to get his legs under him, and scoots over to kiss her. No chance of getting snowballed this time, he supposes. Not that it hadn’t been actually pretty hot when she’d done it, in a filthy kind of way. She still tastes like him, though, and that’s still awesome.

“Well, barring an emergency, we’ve got a whole evening,” she says when they break it off, toying fondly with his hair. “Any thoughts on where to start?”

He blinks for a moment, mind whirling with about sixty different things, but okay, she’s got a weird magitech cock ring on him, she’s clearly gonna make good use of it, and he knows what she likes. “Dressup?”

“Dressup!” She flings her arms in the air, beaming, practically sparkling already.

“Dressup!” he echoes, mirroring her.

Dressup for her means unpeeling her from her spacesuit like the universe’s _most_ delicious fruit for a few rounds of trying on sparkly semi-transparent robes until she settles on one that makes her look like a sunset, and then he unpins and brushes out her hair and scatters glitter through it, and then she paints glitter on his bare skin and they roll around kissing and laughing.

Dressup for him means a lot of chatter about Earth lingerie and improvising things from her wardrobes that ends up with him in a tall soft collar, a corset, thigh-high stockings gartered to said corset, and nothing else.

“Turn around,” Allura says eagerly as she snaps on the last garter, sitting on the edge of her bed so she can get everything into place as he stands. Lance grins, turns, vamps. She traces fingertips over the straps framing his bare ass, and he can hear her soft, appreciative noises. “Stars and fire, you’re lovely like this.”

Lance practically purrs, canting his ass on display. The collar isn’t uncomfortably rigid, but the elegant filigree of it certainly encourages him to keep his head up, and he can feel the high back of it brushing his hairline. The corset isn’t super-tight, but it still keeps his back straight, and he likes the way it holds him snug. He feels wrapped up, presented and shaped for her enjoyment, even though he’s not even tied down or anything like that; it’s making him giddy and unspeakably turned on.

When Allura turns him back around, he recognizes the tilt in her head and the mischief in her eye, and it goes straight to his snugly bound and still-hard dick with a gutwrenching swoop of arousal on the way. Oh, he’s _so_ doomed.

She’s pulling over a second pair of stockings, silky and opaque and matching the pair on his legs. And, after some rummaging, a…roll of tape?

“Allura…?”

“On your knees, pretty thing,” she says lightly.

Lance struggles to breathe for a moment—not because of the corset—and then sinks to his knees on the floor, thighs spread wide, face burning, delirious with surrender. She runs a hand through his hair.

“Do you need your hands anymore?” she asks softly, pressing her thumb into his open mouth.

“Mm-mm,” he moans, shaking his head a little even as he dutifully sucks. “Not unless you do,” he says, when she eases up a little.

“Oh, I’m all set.” She smiles fondly and nudges his chin up with one knuckle up to kiss him thoroughly. Then, when he’s red-lipped and breathing hard, she pats her knee. “Give me your hands.”

He offers them up, wrists crossed, sinking even deeper into the blurry haze of submission that’s become so wonderfully familiar.

But instead of binding them or whipping cuffs out of nowhere or something, she just lifts one hand, delicate and inexorable, and curls his fingers into a loose fist. Then she reaches for the tape.

“What,” Lance starts to ask, a little lost.

“It won’t stick to your skin or hurt to take off,” Allura says soothingly, and starts taping up his hand. Just his hand. Lance looks down at it for a moment, blinking, as his fingers and thumb disappear behind turns of tape, and eventually his brain catches up and his eyes widen. It’s not like he _would_ take anything off that she put on him, but now he _can’t_ , and it’s a dizzying thought. Helpless even if he isn’t cuffed or tied down. A toy. He isn’t even sure what noise he makes as Allura tears off the tape, finishes that hand, and brushes her knuckles gently down his cheek. “Lance? Is this all right?”

“Y-yeah.” Lance has to swallow because his mouth’s gone dry. “Yeah, I’m. Wow.” He laughs, bright and scattered. “That’s evil I love it.”

Allura’s smile turns very, very dangerous as she picks up his other hand. “ _Good_.” Her voice has dropped an octave, predatory, and Lance feels another stomach-swooping stab of helpless arousal as she starts wrapping up his other hand. She leans down to kiss his forehead as she works, soft against his already hot and sweaty skin, and he whines and tries to kiss her back. “In a moment, pet,” she says, almost dismissively, and he feels his breath catch in his throat and waits. Tape torn off. Hands useless. Then she takes his chin in her hand. “Can you move your fingers or break out? Try for me.”

He strains. Licks his lips. “No.”

“Good boy.” She kisses him properly, devouring. He squirms up to get a little closer to her, contact-hungry, and she indulges him, running her hands over his shoulders and back, tracing the smooth shell of the corset nipping in above his hips. “Tell me,” she murmurs against his cheek, “if anything starts to pinch or ache.”

Lance nods wordlessly, and she drags her nails down one of his arms, then pulls it up into her lap. Then grabs for a stocking.

“Ohhh,” Lance breathes. Because size, of course, is so wonderfully mutable with these clothes. “Opera gloves! I get it.” He grins. “Very sexy.”

She beams. “And perfectly matched!” She squinches it up, then pops the toe over his taped fingers, rolls it up his arm, and tugs it neatly into place, ending high on his bicep. Then the other, and a bit of tweaking to make sure they’re symmetrical. “There you go!” She leans back, taking in the full effect and looking very pleased with herself. Lance is breathing a little fast, heart pounding, practically delirious. He’s _hers_ , he’s her pretty plaything, there’s nothing else left in the world.

Allura rises in a swirl of gauzy gown, standing over him where he kneels, and Lance leans against her thigh, and she cards fingers possessively through his hair. Then tugs at the ring that sits at the base of his collar. “Come up here, sweetheart, let’s take a look at you.”

He whines softly, wobbles to his feet, and lets her promenade him to her full-length standing mirror, heart aching with how much he’s walking on sunshine—subshine?—just at hearing that. _Sweetheart._ He flushes a little at seeing himself: the corset shaping his body, the filigree bands at the tops of the gloves and stockings framing his shoulders and thighs, his cock standing up red and hard against his belly. It’s—disconcerting, a little, how his arms end in the lumps of his taped-up fists, paw-like. The only way he could be more blatantly done up like a sex toy is if she’d put that open-mouthed gag on him again, and he sees his own face heat and cock twitch at the thought, and feels almost faint.

Allura brushes glitter through his hair and they argue cheerfully about how well the patterns on the collar and corset and stockings all match, and a coil of her hair tumbles over his shoulder as they kiss, and he goes to tuck it back behind her ear on reflex before he realizes he’s just pawing at it. She gives him a smile that’s one part indulgence and one part devious mischief. “Oh, don’t worry about that right now. All you need to do is be pretty and do as I say.”

Something inside Lance’s chest hitches—or unhitches, maybe, and he sags a little against her in surrender, basking in the cool solidity of her body and the soft gauze she’s wearing.

“Speaking of which,” she says sweetly, with a bit more of an edge in her voice, “lean over and put your forearms on the mirror. Don’t worry, you can put weight on it, it’s sturdier than it looks. Show me that lovely ass of yours.”

Lance hears himself make some little groan of assent, and trusts her about the mirror, and leans. It takes his weight. She parts his thighs, nudging his feet wider. His face is almost right against the glass, he can’t look anywhere but himself even as she runs hands and nails appreciatively over his bare, wiggling ass.

He tries to look over his shoulder as she peels away for a moment, but the collar makes it hard.

When she returns, her fingers are wet, and she dips them down to circle his entrance. “Open for me, sweetheart,” she murmurs in his ear, and he breathes an oh-god-yes-please and backs onto her finger. She works him open with languid slowness and sweet nothings, not particularly speeding up the pace even as he moans and squirms against her. His open-mouthed pants fog the glass, and then the fog gusts away before his next breath, because magical space mirrors are like that. Nice when he showers. Then she goes for his prostate, and he stops thinking much at all.

“Allura,” he manages, ragged, as she starts rubbing it, soft and relentless.

“Ssshhh,” she murmurs, and kisses his temple, his ear, the side of his throat. He can see a slice of her in the mirror, a cloud of hair and glitter and gauze, the swell of one strong shoulder where she’s reaching behind him. “Just take it, pretty thing. See what I see.”

He drags a deep, shaky breath against the corset, trembles against the mirror. He can see his thighs quiver, his face crumpling with pleasure, Allura’s sharp-edged smile in profile against his glitter-dusted hair. It’s almost too much too fast, building mercilessly. Waves of pleasure rolling through his pelvis. He’s full-throated moaning, out of his head, cock twitching its heavy ring.

“See what I see,” Allura whispers again, and wraps her other hand around his cock.

Lance howls, thrusting helplessly between her hands. The world hazes at the edges. In the mirror, flushed, writhing, he’s utterly wrecked. The orgasm-that-isn’t hits him with almost no warning. Harder this time, deeper, rolling over him in a full-body wave that leaves him jello-kneed. Dimly he can see his cock spasming, the light at the base of the ring pulsing as it holds him back. His scream echoes off the glass.

“Ffuuuuh,” he whimpers, legs buckling. Allura lets go of his cock to catch him around the waist and doesn’t even take her fingers out of his ass, and the jolt of sensation is like lightning sparks. He’s already oversensitive. Holy _shit_ , how long is she going to…

“Beautiful,” she breathes in his ear, and he stops thinking. “So beautiful like this.” She kisses the nape of his neck as he shudders, head sagging, and it’s like dropping another story in freefall, abandoning himself, pure bliss. “Ready for me to play with all night long.”

“Oh _god_ ,” Lance breathes, fervent. She keeps that arm around him, steel-steady—which is good, because he can barely keep his feet, the corset is almost like a brace now—and pulls her fingers out of him. Then reaches for something he can’t see, and he’s too busy reeling to even try to get a glance.

Something smooth and slick and hard nudges his entrance.

“Wh…what is that…”

“Just a little toy for you,” Allura says fondly.

“Not so…little, is it…” Lance pants, ragged, as she starts to work it in. Certainly not as big as some things she’s put up there, mostly variations of herself, but it’s hard. Feels bigger than it is. He’s ready, certainly, even if it’s large enough to make him groan.

“You make such lovely noises like this, sweetheart,” Allura murmurs, and Lance’s brain pretty much shuts down entirely. The toy sinks in to the base, plugging him up—and pressing right on his prostate, making him gasp. “I don’t ever want them to stop.” She pats his ass, not particularly gently, jostling the toy inside him, and he moans and leans hard against the mirror, resting his forehead on the cool glass.

She steps back for a moment, studies him, wipes her hands. He’s only dimly aware of her moving, getting something else from one of her drawers; he’s mostly trying to keep his feet, adjusting to the hefty plug.

“Though,” Allura says, honey-sweet, drifting back to his side in a billow of gauze. “Toys don’t talk.”

“Oh, fuck,” Lance whispers fervently. Allura’s hand clamps over his mouth for a moment, and he makes some soft noise of apology and rubs his face against it. Then she tugs at his jaw.

“Close your eyes, pet.”

 _Close your eyes and open your mouth_ , Lance thinks, a little scattered, and does just that. Something velvet-slick and a little plasticy-tasting slides between his lips, just an inch or so. Something kind of dick-sized. Dick-shaped?Nice and thick. Lance isn’t quite sure, and he obediently keeps his eyes closed, and blows it on principle, swirling his tongue around it.

“Mm, that’s better,” Allura says, with just a touch of danger. She’s fucking his face with whatever it is, just a little, not particularly deep. Then, when she does slide it deeper, Lance realizes why. It’s not a dildo. Just two inches of dick on a strap that goes around his head.

Allura pulls it snug and seals it, then tugs a few strands of his hair out from under the strap to tousle them. “There you go,” she purrs, and tweaks one of his nipples. Lance squawks around his gag. It’s a pretty solid mouthful of cock, he’s not sure he could make intelligible words even if he wanted to. Or could. _Could_ is kind of going out the window anyway. “You can open your eyes now.”

Lance blinks at himself in the mirror. On the outside, the gag’s just a band smoothing over his mouth, and he’s wide-eyed over it, heavily flushed. He works at it with his tongue, can’t help little desperate noises around it.

Allura taps her chin with a finger for a moment, plotting, then taps Lance’s shoulder. “Stand up, turn around. Let’s see…” Lance stands, a little unsteady, thighs quivering with every motion of the plug inside him. Allura surveys him with satisfaction, and then lights up. “Oh! Yes, of course. One more thing.”

“Mmnm?”

She rummages for a moment, then comes up with a pair of glittering ice-blue sparkly things. On clamps. Oh fuck. She starts tweaking one of his nipples in earnest, tugging hard. He keens into his gag, squirming against her, overwhelmed with sensation. Then straight-up howls, garbled, when the clip closes around oversensitive flesh. Then the second. He shakes, bracing himself on her shoulder with one taped-up fist. The constant bite of the clamps is a live wire to his bound cock. So’s the pressure on his prostate. Allura smiles indulgently, pings one of the baubles on his nipples with a fingertip, and watches him writhe and moan.

“I’m surprised,” she says slowly, interspersing it with tweaks to his clamped nipples, a finger run up the underside of his cock to make him quiver, “that you can still stand.”

Lance makes a quavery noise and wobbles one paw back and forth.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll put on a good show for me,” Allura says, and drifts back to her dresser.

Lance thinks, very dimly, that he’d normally grin and strike a pose and plan all _sorts_ of things if he got to put on a show for Allura, but now he mostly wobbles and whimpers behind his gag. So _so_ so _very_ doomed.

Allura picks up a little disk that maybe has buttons on it, Lance isn’t quite sure, and does _something_ , and the plug hums to life inside him, vibrating deep and inexorable against his prostate.

Lance’s knees nearly buckle right then, and he _howls_ , and the heavy little baubles are bouncing and tugging on his nipples, and his brain is just gonna stop working, gone, leaked out his ears, he’s going to have like a sex aneurysm right here, he’s feeling so much at once. Sparks of pain in his nipples. He’s pawing at the clamps in spite of himself, whining, feet shuffling as he tries to cope with the vibrations.

Allura’s circling him slowly, cool as a cucumber, smiling like he’s the best thing on TV, and all he can do is feel things and make noises. _Fuck_. She’s still holding the—remote? The Lance remote. He _is_ TV. He laughs around his mouthful of fake cock, high and scattered.

Allura tilts her head and plays with the remote.

The vibrations build. Ratcheting up slowly, one long roller coaster, until they’re so strong Lance is toppling to his knees, shaking. Then the intensity falls away. Back to the start. Building again.

At the second peak, Lance is writhing on the floor.

At the third, he comes.

Allura takes pity and dials it back down. Almost off. The occasional low rumble, seemingly random, making him twitch for a few seconds in post-orgasmic haze before cutting out.

By the time he’s mostly caught his breath, she’s sitting at her dresser in a billow of her gown, remote on the table next to her, uncapping a small bottle. “You’ll keep me from getting bored while my nails dry, yes?”

Lance whimpers.

The polish is a sparkly sunset orange. He thinks? He can’t see it very well from the floor. For a while, through a few random pulses of the vibe, he stares at her feet. Her arches. Her neatly trimmed toenails. The wires of tendons in her ankles. She hasn’t put on her pink lion slippers, she’s being dignified tonight.

The vibrator pulses harder and he arches off the floor with a keening howl.

She must have turned it up for a moment between nails. Then back down. The gag is just a little bit soft. Good to chew on. The pain in his nipples has started to fade into a deep, dull soreness, twinging every time they get tugged about by the weights. Lance rolls carefully onto his back to give them a rest, but of course that puts pressure on the plug.

Allura has started on her other hand.

He doesn’t know how long it’ll take to dry. Altean nail polish dries in seconds. Did she get that bottle at the mall?

The next random pulse leaves him whimpering after it fades. His cock’s a raw nerve. He’s not sure how many times he can come like this. He’s looking at her face now, watching her eyes flicker back and forth between drinking him in and carefully filling in her nails. Three left. Two. Two pulses hit him in succession, and the second one’s stronger, and he tenses with a ragged cry. Gone as soon as it came.

She caps the bottle, carefully. Blows on her nails. Leans forward a little, spreading her fingers out on her knees to dry, watching him like she’ll devour him.

After he thrashes through few more pulses, she reaches out with the flat of one finger, delicately, and turns up the vibe.

No more breaks where it’s off. There’s a constant, very low rumble. And it surges. Fades again. Hits him with a few split-second highs that make him squeak in surprise. Low waves. Then a few seconds intense enough that he’s thrashing and screaming by the end, muffled, nipples be damned.

Then it repeats.

He digs his heels into the floor. Braces himself. That just means he’s clenching down around the thick plug, and the peak hits him even harder.

Allura’s smiling like a cat with cream, with that particular light she gets in her eyes when she _knows_ she’s pushing him, when she’s watching him strain and struggle for her sake and loving it, and Lance wants to be good for her, desperately, but the next time the peak hits him, he also wants it to just—he can’t take this—

He makes a wounded noise into his gag and curls on his side because he doesn’t know _why_. He likes being dolled up like this? He likes putting on a show? The vibe and the different orgasms are—a lot, yeah, they’re a lot, but he’s never felt pleasure like this, it’s kind of fucking terrifying to think of how far it might go but he also really wants to know—

The next peak shatters his train of thought, and he paws at the floor and aches for the warmth of Allura’s hands. He wants to tap out. He doesn’t want it to stop. He’s kicking, twitching, whining and turning his face into the deckplates. He doesn’t know why he feels like this. One of the nipple weights clatters against the the floor.

“So lovely.”

He jerks his head up at the sound of her voice, eyes desperately searching out her face.

“You’re putting on such a pretty show for me. Your sweet noises. The way you squirm even when you know it won’t help, the way you can’t help yourself.” Her voice is soft, coaxing. Like she’s realized how hard he’s struggling. “The way you brace yourself when you know what’s coming and you can’t escape it. I could watch this all night.”

 _Please_ , Lance tries to say, and the gag’s so thick that it comes out more like _eeehs_ s _,_ but maybe she understood it, maybe?

She smiles indulgently. “I know. Just a little longer, my pet.”

Just a little longer. Lance screws his eyes shut for a moment, then they fly back open as the peak hits him. He’d lost track of the rhythm. He screams, muffled. Her eyes shine. She’s—of _course_ she’s enjoying this, this is for her, this is pleasing her, he wants to please her—

“Eeehs ush ee.” He swallows his mouthful of drool, shoves ineffectively at the fake cock with his tongue—and some part of him coils with gut-deep, mad arousal at that, at being silenced when he so desperately wants to beg for so much as a fingertip on his skin, and some part of him beats like a caged bird. “Eeehs. Eeesh.” He’s canting his hips up in the air, senseless, even when that does wretchedly wonderful things to his plugged ass.

She slides the remote into her palm with care, rises in a great swirl of sunset gauze. “Soon, darling.” Bare brown feet padding closer. Until she’s standing right over him, and somewhere in his scattered brain he realizes he could reach out. No hands. He doesn’t have hands. But he can loop an arm around her ankle. “There, there. I know it’s difficult. But I know you can do this. I know you can be gorgeous for me.”

Lance whines into his gag and curls tight around her legs, wrapping all his limbs around her as best he can. Gauze envelopes him, warm from her skin, smelling of her. The next peak doesn’t come; instead the vibrations stay at a low rumble, ebbing and flowing, almost soothing if it wasn’t for the hot core of desperate overstimulation.

“Soon, darling.”

 

**❇**

 

Lance—Lance had worried her, on the floor, the way he’d gone glassy-eyed. But he hadn’t tapped out. He’d refocused when she started talking, lit up when she touched him again. Now he’s clingy and pliable and desperate, blue eyes bright over his gag, and when she asks softly if he wants to keep going, he nods, prompt and frantic. So she slips one arm under his shoulders and one arm under his knees and bodily carries him to bed with the vibrator still pulsing in his ass, feeling him tremble every time it surges.

She takes her sweet time playing with him, letting him have the touches he’d begged for even through his gag. Running her hands over every inch of his skin she can reach, letting him cling to her heedless of the pressure on his clamped nipples as she gropes his ass and thighs thoroughly, spanks him sweet and light to jostle the plug and make him moan. By the time she’s done with that, he seems like whatever tension had plagued him has melted away. Which is good, because she knows she’ll need to take the clamps off soon.

He whines when she reaches for them, squirming away from her touch, pawing at her wrists—not with any force, she notices. It’s a token protest. Like he wants to be pushed. She trusts him, rolls with him, lets her voice be poison honey. “I know, darling. I know it’ll hurt.” She tugs at one, twists it slowly, and he shudders and wails. “They’ve been fun so far.” She rearranges himself—they’re kneeling on the bed, facing each other, and she’s stroking his chest with both hands now, massaging, tender except when she tugs at a clamp. “But they’ll need to come off soon.” Another twist; he makes a garbled whine, pawing vaguely at her, nostrils flaring as he gulps for air. “I can still do _this_ , of course, since you like it so much.” Another tug. “But _these_ need to go.”

He groans, eloquent, flinching when she grabs for the clamps and leaning desperately into every other touch.

“Would you like to come again?” she asks sweetly. “To make things easier for you?”

His eyes widen, huge and drowning.

“Which do you think would be worse?” She flicks one of the weights, sets it jiggling. “To feel all the pain when they come off right now, just like this, or to bury it in pleasure?”

He whimpers, shakes his head.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that…” Flick. Jiggle. It was, of course, a hard question for him to answer gagged. “Poor dear. Do you want me to take these off now?”

He squirms harder, trying to dodge her hands, but not crawling backwards. And shakes his head urgently, eyes pleading.

“Of course, darling,” she purrs. “I understand. I’ll take care of you. Just lie back…”

He hesitates, obeys, a little shaky. She slides the intensity of the vibrations up a little higher _just_ as he’s rolling back on his ass, and he squawks, fumbles, sprawls on his back.

She smiles, bright and sweet, and crawls between his legs, and runs her tongue up the sensitive underside of his cock.

He freezes, panting heavily, and whimpers in the back of his throat, thighs trembling in time with the pulses of vibration.

She swallows him down and turns it up to high.

She _almost_ miscalculated. Fortunately he wails right on the brink of orgasm for a moment, and tips over just as she manages to reach one clamp and pluck it off him with merciless speed, and his spasms last long enough that she can get the other. He _screams_ , straight-up, whole body rigid, head thrashing from side to side. Gulps air and keeps screaming.

She turns the vibrator back down, and gathers him close, and rubs his chest soothingly—just _barely_ missing his nipples—and he shakes and hyperventilates and clings, but his eyes aren’t glassy. Wide and overwhelmed but still in focus, and she coos and pets his hair and tells him he did wonderfully and grazes her fingernails over his red and aching nipples to hear his broken whimpers.

His whimpers that are very, _very_ urgently reminding her of how desperately aroused _she_ is. She’s slick down her thighs; the scent’s clinging to the air around her, to the gauze of her gown. He must be able to smell it. When she dips two fingers between her legs, she’s burning hot and wet. When she holds them under his nose, his eyes roll back in his head, and there’s another round of garbled _please please please_.

“Oh, I will, darling,” she breathes in his ear. “Soon you’ll be buried inside me.” She doesn’t _actually_ know yet how much stimulation he can handle like this, after all. It’s their first time out with this thing. Not the last, she hopes. And she plans to take full advantage. “But first…”

She gives his cock a few testing strokes, seeing how oversensitive he is from his last orgasm—he groans, a plucked nerve, and jolts away from her touch. Maybe he needs a _little_ more time.

“First I need to play with that lovely ass of yours some more.” She drags him ass-up over her lap. “And make sure this is still right where it should be.” She nudges the base of the plug to make him moan, driving it a little deeper, moving it around inside him; she can feel the vibrations running down her hand, even still set to low. “Can’t have you losing that, after all. Not when it makes you scream so sweetly.” She spanks him again, light and teasing, and he moans and bucks against her hand. _Into_. Not away.

“Mm, what’s this?” Another spank. “You like that?” Spank. “You like when I hurt you just to hear you moan?” Spank. She’s still keeping it light. She wasn’t planning on pain tonight—she’s strong enough that it could get serious, but not now. Now she’s just teasing, letting his cock recover a little so she can ride him properly. “Like when I play with those nipples of yours?”

He makes some determined noise that might be a yes, and that cracks when she slides her other hand under him and finds his sore nipples. Pinch. Spank. He vibrates between her hands, keening into his gag.

So there’s more masochism than she’d explored so far.

Later, though. Now she has his cock at her disposal. Without the limits of his swift and softening orgasms. And he’s grinding against her thigh a little, which is a good sign that riding him won’t break him by now.

She rolls him over, props him up against the headboard, and makes a show of shedding her sunset-gauze gown, letting it pool at the foot of the bed, leaving her in just a cloud of hair and glitter, and the awe in his eyes should be a controlled substance. He keens, reaches for her with his mitten hands, and she smiles indulgently and crawls over him.

“Such a good toy,” she whispers, and kisses his cheek over the edge of his gag, and reaches under her to grab his cock and line it up. He’s aching hard, tidily presented by the ring behind his balls, and she’s far beyond messing around. She takes him to the root with one push of her hips, savoring the delicious sudden stretch and his blissed-out moan.

“So,” she says, fishing the remote up from where she’d left it in the sheets, and giving one lazy roll of her hips to keep his attention. “Let’s see…there we go.” She finds the button that will make it cling to her skin, attaches it to the inside of her right wrist, fiddles with the functions to synchronize it. He groans at it switches over to the new mode, a low and steady pulse. “The faster my heart beats, the stronger it’ll be.” She cards fingers through his hair, kisses his other cheek. “You want to make me come like this, don’t you, darling? You want to make me gasp and moan with my heart hammering? You’ll feel every bit of it.”

Lance keens, nods urgently, squirms as he tries to buck up into her with the corset holding him snug. He wraps his arms almost hesitantly around her, feather-light, and she squeezes him tight in return, body and cock both, dragging nails over his bare shoulders as she starts to ride him in earnest. He’s shuddering, pressed tight against her, making a steady stream of delightful noises as he matches her rhythm. They’re cheek to cheek, clutching each other tight, and she can feel the heat in his face, damp with sweat, cut across by the smooth band of his gag.

She can’t kiss him.

He’s had something to suck on long enough. “Ssshhh, darling.” She unseals the gag and takes her sweet time peeling it off, fucking his mouth with it a little before she tosses it aside. He’s red-lipped, messy, and she catches him by the hair and kisses him before he can manage words, lip-biting and devouring, eating up all his moans.

“…lura…” he manages, ragged, when she finally lets him breathe. “Allura…god…”

“Ssshhh,” she purrs, and grabs him by the jaw and shoves her thumb as deep as it will go. His eyes haze out and he sucks, obedient. At least for a little while. She tightens down on his cock, shifting the angle between them to suit her taste, and his mouth falls open, moaning heedless around her hand. “Keep your hips still for me, pet. Let me ride you.”

He mostly manages that much, shuddering under her with the effort. She’s keeping it slow and deliberate for now. Canting her hips for just the right angle. Hitting the sensitive spots deep inside—it’s really quite convenient that his cock has that cute little upward curve, they fit together quite nicely. Slow and deliberate, over and over, until heat starts to build low in her belly, shivers like lightning running down her thighs. She’s teasing herself, using him like the toy she keeps calling him, building herself up until she’s making long shuddering groans on each stroke—she knows she’ll come harder if she starts like this, deep and slow, until she’s _aching_ for more.

Her heart rate’s probably picking up a little. His moans certainly are. And of course he’s sitting right on the plug, drilling it deep. At least for now. She tightens an arm around his waist, rearranging them a little. Rises. Sinks down. Lets go of his jaw and reaches for a pillow to shove behind her. Rises. Sinks down. Another pillow. Lance whines questioningly in her ear, breaking into an open-mouthed groan as she sinks down.

“Move with me, pet. I’m going to have you over me.”

“Y-yeah…” He fumbles, starts folding his legs under him as she guides him. It’s a _little_ ridiculous to try to do it without pulling out, but they’re both quite athletic, and it’s way too much fun to watch him struggle around the corset and plug and mitts.

She clutches him close, holding him in, and rolls back.

He _almost_ pops out—backwards, the painful way—but they sort themselves out. She wrangles pillows. Her hips are high, a good foot off the bed, giving him plenty of leverage and an angle that lets him hit her sensitive spots hard. She hitches her legs up, resting a foot on his shoulder and wrapping the other around his waist, opening herself up further, and gasps as his hips stutter forward. The vibe’s picked up as they moved, and he’s openly trembling, panting for air.

Lance twines one gloved arm around her leg and turns his head to kiss the top of her foot in adoration.

“Give me everything you’ve got,” Allura breathes, catching his other taped-up hand and squeezing it.

“Oh god yes,” he breathes, and does.

She’s too far gone to shut him up. Too far gone to do much beyond get a solid handful of the sheets with her free hand and clench her leg around his waist. Wouldn’t do to get drilled off the pillows and out of position. Not when the position means he’s hitting her like _this_ , every stroke sending sparks up her spine. He finds a steady rhythm—he knows well by now that she likes it steady. Fucking her deep with liquid thrusts of his hips, even when it makes sweat bead on his forehead. Even moving around that plug. Which is, of course, picking up intensity along with her heartbeat.

“Yes—yes—just like that—“ She spurs him on with squeezes of her leg around his waist when she needs to. She’s teased herself slowly up a high, high plateau, and now she’s rocketing towards something truly spectacular, a great coil of heat burning in her belly. “Don’t you dare stop—”

Her voice cracks on a wild cry. She clenches hard, riding the edge, and Lance just about screams, raw and ragged. It’s costing him to not break rhythm, she can tell. He’s pushing himself so hard for her. Such a dear, sweet boy. It’s a thin, coiling thread of entirely unsavory pleasure—but they’re both safe, he accepts this, she can let out the most frightening parts of herself, she can drag her toes across his lips and make him suck them just because she wants to hear his voice garbled, struggling to cry out—

Her first orgasm crashes over her like a wild wave, deep and massive, and she writhes screaming as it runs through her head to toe. Lance screams too, full-throated—she must have tipped him over, and from the sound of it, it’s almost painful.

She goes from holding his taped-up hand to holding his wrist, not too tight, but a grip he can’t possibly break. “Don’t stop,” she hisses.

“Fu-u-uck,” Lance whimpers around her toes, face crumpling. His hips stutter. His whole body shakes as he forces himself into motion and fucks her right through his own oversensitive comedown, with the vibrator still tormenting him, and it might well be the hardest thing she’s yet seen him do.

But he does it.

Allura takes it with full-body shudders, wild pleasure coursing through her. She can barely _think_ , riding it out, screaming _good_ and _yes_ and _more_ when she can get a lungful. He’s starting to get his pace back, voice straining on every stroke. A second orgasm hits her. A third. She’s lost track of her legs, of time. At some point, dimly, between rounds of thrashing with her eyes screwed shut, she catches Lance looking at her with terrified awe, drinking in every drop of her reactions.

He’s earned it.

She hits one of those strange, watery-limbed lacunas for a few moments, where she feels like she’s a nerveless vessel, pleasure pouring into her, light and simple and unbounded by flesh. Sweating, shaking, he mouths her name, like he’s trying to ask if she’s done.

“More,” she whispers, with all the breath she has.

He hooks an elbow around one of her thighs for leverage, groaning, and she can feel the strain run all through him as he finds the power to fuck her harder still.

Just like that, the vessel overflows.

She comes so hard her vision dims and sparks, whole body arching off her pillows, a cry torn from her throat in a voice she barely recognizes.

Lance at least manages to read a few vague, palm-down flaps of her hand as _stop_. He gives her a few final thrusts, slowing down, and finally stills inside her, slumping over her with a groan of relief.

Silky-smooth fabric touches the side of her face, and it takes her a moment to realize that he’s petting her cheek, even with his hands taped, even forced to his limit, even shaking from the plug still working away inside him.

“Darling,” she breathes, and turns her face to kiss his hand.

She isn’t quite sure how long they stay like that as her brain comes back on line. As her heartrate slows along with his violent tremors. He kisses her eventually, balancing his weight carefully on his arms, and she hooks her leg over his ass to hold him in.

“Do you want to come inside me?” she murmurs eventually, an inch from his lips, one finger tracing down the chain around his neck that holds the key to his cock ring.

It seems to take him a long moment to realize what she’s asking, and then he shudders, eyes widening. “I…I don’t…I-I can’t…I don’t know if I can take any more…”

She catches the chain, pulls him back down that last inch, and kisses him slow and deliberate, dragging his lower lip between her teeth.

“I’ll take it off,” she breathes when she’s done. “You can come for real. Let go of all that pressure that’s been building.”

“Oh god,” he whimpers.

“Do you want that? Do you really want to just stop like this?”

“I…” He shivers, buries his face in her shoulder. “I don’t know, I don’t wanna stop, I can’t take any more…”

“Sshhhh…” She runs a hand through his hair, sweaty and tousled, soothing. “Ssshhh.” Then guides his head up when he’s started to breath a little steadier. “Signal me if you want to stop.”

His eyes widen and he whimpers. Which—isn’t an acknowledgement, not really.

“Signal me if you want to stop,” she says again, a little firmer.

He nods, a little frantic.

She smiles, soft and dangerous. “I’d like to see you come one more time.”

“Oh god,” he whines, and doesn’t signal.

She reaches for the key around his neck and he jerks away. And doesn’t signal.

Allura takes one deep shaky breath of her own, and trusts him, and lets her smile become a little more dangerous. Her hand, she thinks. She wants a little more control. She catches one of his wrists, starts to move him, and he keeps murmuring scared under his breath and letting her. He gasps, ragged, and shivers when she slides off his dick, and he’s weak and pliable as she rolls him onto his back, sitting beside him so she has a nice view of his face and his cock in easy reach.

He outright tries to bat her away when she reaches for it. “Oh god, please, please, I can’t…”

The same when she reaches for the key.

Some places you can’t go without being pushed.

She folds his wrists together in one hand and pins them to the mattress above his head.

He struggles, a constant stream of begging now. Her heart rate’s probably picked up a little again in excitement; she’s still riding the high of her own mind-shattering orgasms, and everything is bright and clear, and his eyes are very blue. He tries to buck away as she reaches for the key again, but he can’t break her grip, and he can’t keep a pendant from her for long. Two taps and it falls away.

He gives a full-throated, desperate groan. His cock twitches as it’s set free.

She’s soaked him. Beads of thick, creamy-pink fluid sliding slowly down his dick, painfully hard and so dark it’s almost purple. She’s soaked his balls, his thighs. The stockings will need a run through the washing pod. She runs her palm slowly, almost gently, over the head of his cock, peeping out tender and naked from its little cowl.

“I can’t I can’t I can’t please god please…”

“You know how to tell me to stop,” she says, with great deliberation.

He doesn’t. Just keeps begging and squirming. She rearranges herself so she can drop one leg over his, pinning him so he can twist away from her. Considers, a little late, if she should change the vibrator settings—it won’t get very high like this. But she doubts he’ll need much to tip him over, and she’s tormented his prostate enough. And she can hit the auto-off button with her _nose_ if she needs to, once he’s come.

She gives his cock a full stroke, eased by her own slick, and he howls like a man possessed, struggling under her. It’s an _entrancing_ sight. A second stroke and he’s bug-eyed, babbling. “I dunno—I dunno whas happening—I feel like—I feel like I’m gonna break—”

“You won’t break, darling,” she says, low and soothing, and gives another inexorable stroke, swirling her hand around the head at the peak of it, and he _screams_. “It’s hard being a toy, I know. But you can do it.”

“I can’t I can’t please don’t please stop I need to—I need to—oh god—“

Another stroke. She can just barely hear the vibrator, hear it kick up just a little more as she drinks in his reactions—still a relatively low rumble though. He must be clamped tight around it lying like this though, the poor thing. Another, just a little faster, this time with her thumb teasing the slit.

He shrieks. His whole body pulses under her—now he’s almost bucking into her hand in spite of himself—and his voice slurs into nothing but _please_ in between his cries. He’s close, balls drawing up. He looks almost terrified of his own body—he’s probably never felt an orgasm this intense coming on—

He starts coming on the next stroke.

She expected it to be thrashingly, explosively intense. She expected him to scream so hard the cords in his throat stand out. She didn’t expect the actual _come_ to be so—expansive. The first spurt splatters on her headboard, and she gasps in sheer surprise. His spasming cock paints a few more lines of white over his chest, even to his chin.

She holds him through the last pulse of his orgasm, then quickly slips her hand off his dick and ducks her head to turn off the vibrator.

He sags limp underneath her, stunned, eyes huge. They don’t quite track for a moment, then find her, and his mouth moves without sound. And then, faintly, he says, “oh, _wow_.”

 

**❇**

 

For a while after that, Lance isn’t thinking much at all.

He maybe actually passes out for a bit. Or zones out. Or—something. He’s high as a kite, run ragged, the desperate fear from some faraway time blown aside, leaving him in a sort of stunned and nerveless euphoria. Allura is lavishing love on him, praising him and cuddling him as he comes down. Working out the plug gets his attention. So does peeling the tape off his hands, and he stares at the faint imprints on his skin for what feels like a long while.

He’s in the bath, soaking in sweet-smelling water that warms him to his bones, curled skin to skin with Allura as she massages his hands, when he notices that he’s shaking. Which doesn’t make any sense. He’s _warm_. Allura’s right there. But that’s a thing that’s happening. He feels sluggish, and there’s a slowly coiling dread in his belly, and he doesn’t know why this is happening.

“Lance?” Allura asks softly. Her wet hand is cupping the back of his head, petting him soothingly. Had she been speaking to him?

“I…’m fine, sorry.”

She studies him for a moment, and then plants her fingers on the side of his throat, just under his ear. It takes him too long to realize she’s taking his pulse. “You’re _shaking_. Is the bath cold for you?”

“N-no, the bath’s perfect…” His voice sounds off. The dread in his belly runs colder. _Is_ something wrong with him? Like, actually? “I don’t…I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

Allura takes the sort of deep breath that means she’s pulling herself into focus, and now there’s real concern in her eyes. Maybe an edge of fear? _That_ makes his stomach clench. He shouldn’t be scaring her…

“S-sorry,” Lance starts, fumbling.

“Lance, listen,” Allura says, quiet and firm. “I have a medical scanner in my nightstand. I’d like to check your vitals, in case that toy had some unexpected effect on your physiology. And if that’s not it, we can figure it out from there.”

“…oh,” Lance says slowly. “That…” _That_ makes sense, at least. “Yeah, okay.” It must have done something to his…hormones, or whatever? He doesn’t have the faintest idea how it worked. But maybe that’s why…

“Do you want to come with me while I get it or stay in the bath?”

Lance isn’t sure why he can’t answer that. He doesn’t want to be a bother. He doesn’t want to get out of the bath. He doesn’t want her to leave. “I’ll…stay,” he manages after a bit.

Allura’s concern lines deepen a little at that, and before she even gets herself entirely out of the bath, Chulatt and Chuchule manifest themselves out of one of their mouseholes, pitter-pattering along the edge of the tub.

“Jeez,” Lance mumbles, offering them a wet fingertip. “I’m not gonna drown in the bath, guys.”

 _Byuu_ , says Chuchule, fussily, and whisker-kisses his hand.

There are mice. He can pet mice. Allura’s pulling on a bathrobe, rattling around her room. She’s right there. He doesn’t need to feel this—this needy, shit, this is embarrassing. Needy enough that his eyes burn from being left in a nice bubble bath for like an entire minute.

Allura comes back, and guides him to sit up, and wipes the center of his chest with a towel so she can run the scanner over it. Then his forehead. Some of the ache in Lance’s belly eases just at this—her hands, her concern, quiet and methodical.

She frowns at the scanner for a moment, then lifts her head. “There’s nothing overtly wrong. Certainly not with your circulatory system, that would have been the worst risk. Your adrenal balance seems off, at least by its understanding of humans—your endorphins are low.”

He blinks at her, not understanding a word of that. “Would that…make me feel…”

She sets it aside and slides carefully back into the tub next to him, smoothing comforting hands over his shoulders. “What are you feeling, exactly?”

“Uh…shaky, out of it? And kind of…gross like I just had a big fight or something. The arguing with a friend kind, not the defending the universe kind. I think?”

Allura’s next breath is a little shaky. “You’re…emotionally drained, probably. Badly.” Her lips move without sound for a moment. “At the end, when you were begging me to stop—what did that feel like? Was that…was that too much?”

Lance feels his brow furrow, thinks of writhing and babbling under her with her hand like fire on his worn-out dick, sensations he couldn’t even comprehend building in his belly. “Honestly, I don’t even remember _what_ I was begging you for…like I was scared? But good scared? And I liked that you were doing what you wanted with me. A-and it was. Amazing, in the end. Like. Heaven. I’ve never felt anything like that, it was incredible.”

She mulls on that for a moment. “When I was spanking you…?”

“Okay, that was just hot.” He doesn’t even need to think about that much. Over her knee, ass smarting like he was a naughty…is that it? Did he feel like he did something wrong that needed spanking? But he hadn’t, she was just doing it because she wanted to, for fun, she’d _said_ that. And he hadn’t felt like he’d done anything wrong then either.

“When I was doing my nails? You looked…very far away for a bit.”

“Nah, that was…” Lance’s voice dies in his throat. “I.” He swallows hard. “Oh.” He frowns. “Jeez. I. _Shit_ I feel stupid. T-the rest was amazing, it was all amazing, it was a lot and it was scary but it was _good_ …”

“Why do you feel stupid?” Allura asks, and her voice seems somehow small and thin.

“B-because it was great, and you did all that amazing stuff for me, and I’m—” He waves vaguely at himself. “Sitting here in your bathtub shaking like an idiot because I freaked out a little and got over it?”

“Lance—”

“O-okay I guess I didn’t get over it, why didn’t I get over it, shit, um—”

“I’m so sorry.”

That startles him into silence, and he stares at her, heart aching, because she looks like _her_ heart’s aching. “N-no,” he blurts after a moment. “No, it’s not your fault, I—”

“I hurt you,” she says, simple and plain, and picks up both his hands in hers, and bows her head to rest against his knuckles. “I’m sorry. Whatever I must do to regain your trust, please tell me.”

Lance blinks at her in sheer bewilderment for a moment, and then the creeping dread in his gut surges and he feels, abruptly, actually sick. “No—no, I—Allura, I screwed up. It was me, it was my fault.” She picks her head up, confusion on her face, and the real _scope_ of how badly he screwed up is starting to sink in, and Lance just wants to fucking run, but he forces it out. “I-I wanted to signal. I thought about it. But I didn’t.”

Allura goes very still for a moment, hands squeezing his so hard it almost hurts.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because I couldn’t figure out why, and I felt stupid, and…shit, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

“Lance—”

“I just. Felt bad and I didn’t know why, like I liked being dressed up and I liked putting on a show and the vibrator thing was horrible but I loved it but I just wanted. I felt kind of hollow, and I just.”

“You were begging me to touch you, I could _hear_ it, I should have realized how bad it was—”

“I love you and you weren’t paying attention to me,” Lance blurts, frank and wretched.

There’s a moment of terribly echoing silence. Drops of water run off Allura’s hair. Plip. Plip. She looks stunned. Then her face crumples. Just a little.

“Oh god.” Lance yanks his hands out of hers and buries his face in them instead, not caring about the wet. “I just said that. Wow. Lance fucks up o’clock.”

“Lance,” Allura croaks. “I.”

“Don’t say anything,” Lance manages in a rush. “No no no no don’t say anything. I-I know. Coran’s grandfather built the Castle six hundred years ago and my grandfather built his crazy houseboat like sixty years ago and I _know_. It’s probably better if you _don’t_ love me, not for real, not like that.” His throat closes and he can feel his lip quivering. Damn it. He was supposed to be okay with this. This is supposed to be how things are. “You don’t owe me anything and you don’t have to make yourself and you don’t have to answer and I’m sorry.”

“Oh gods,” Allura says, and her voice is very small.

“I—I’m just gonna—“ His voice cracks outright, and he scrambles back, splashing, finds the edge of the tub.

Maybe, in the blur of starting to cry in earnest, she’s reaching for him as he scrambles out of her bathroom, but he’s honestly not even sure, and all he wants to do is run off and hide like a wounded animal anyway.

 

**❇**

 

Allura is…absolutely not brooding. In any way whatsoever. She’s. Going over reports. In her room. The same report. Five times. While the mice sit at her elbow and don’t so much as chitter, just eye her in unwanted concern. Her chest aches and she feels vaguely nauseous and her hair’s a wet and uncombed tangle and she is not, in any way, brooding.

She realizes, a few moments after the fact, that she’d said that to Chulatt. Out loud. _Twice._

The disgruntled squeak she gets in answer points out the perfectly obvious: if she has to say it out loud, twice, like that, it’s not true.

Damn it.

She puts down the report and buries her face in her hands.

“I’m not angry at him,” she says, slowly, like she’s testing the waters. It comes out flatter than she expected, but it’s probably true. It _must_ be true. “That would be cruel of me,” she says, and that comes out softer.

Plachu gives a soft _ffft_.

“I know I’m angry,” she sighs. “Not at him.”

Chuchule bumps gently against her elbow.

Allura sighs and reburies her face. “I…it’s not as if it surprised me.” The churning in her stomach is settling into a cold, heavy weight. Of _course_ he’s in love with her. That sweet, reckless, _idiot_ mayfly who pours so much of himself out without care. “Not really. I just.”

 _Buu_ , says Platt.

“Of _course_ I’m angry at myself,” she says, very quietly. “I’ve been…selfish. And I’m scared, because he’s right. About human lives.”

 _Mmrrrr_ , says—something else, and Allura stares in dumbfounded confusion at the mice for far longer than she should, because of course that’s not a mouse. Not deep and rumbling and inside and below like that.

The Blue Lion’s calling her.

Allura flings on her dressing gown and scampers for the hangar, pink lion slippers scuffling.

The lion’s sitting on her haunches as usual, barrier down, and her eyes are lit. There’s that particular sense of warmth and animation that Allura never feels from an unoccupied lion, and for a moment, as Blue stretches her jaws down to welcome her aboard, Allura feels very, very small.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, resting a hand on the warm living metal of the lion’s jaw as the massive laser crystal in her throat slides aside.

Inside, the displays are muted, mostly asleep. Soft blue light bathes the cockpit. Lance, huddled in his usual hoodie, is sitting on the floor, leaning against one side of the console, looking a little anxiously up at the door. He’d have seen her come, of course, felt Blue’s head dip to take her in.

Allura would think he’d also been absolutely not brooding in any way whatsoever, except his eyes are a little red-rimmed. Then again, he’s always been more in touch with his feelings than—well, any of the team, herself included.

“Are you…mad at me?” he asks, voice a little thin.

“No,” she says, weary and earnest. “Gods, no. Are…are you with me?”

“Super not.” Some of the tension drops off his shoulders, and he hesitates a moment, then says, “Wanna…uh, pull up some floor?”

“Mm.” She crouches at first, a little cautious—irrationally so, maybe, but she ruggled up. It’s been…a while since she’s ruggled up this badly. “What are you thinking about?” she asks quietly.

“…stuff.” He laughs a little and flaps a hand. “Okay, that sounds dumb. Everything, I guess. Life.”

“Life…?”

“You know,” he says slowly. “I…thought I had it all figured out. Get myself a cushy space adventure job at the Garrison, go to space and be awesome, get a little bit famous, date a lot of girls, find the one, settle down. Get a place in Cuba, see her between missions, retire early so I can be with our kids.” He stretches and stares up at the cockpit ceiling with a little laugh. “Then I talk Hunk into sneaking out to play around in town, and one weird thing leads to another, and bam. Not in control of my life. Well. Like I was in control of anything when I was seventeen and dumb anyway.”

Allura slides slowly down to sit next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and leans. He settles a hand in her hair, makes a disapproving noise at the tangles. “Does it bother you?” she asks softly. “Giving up so much control to me when we’re together?”

He blinks. “Pff. Nah. Okay, I had a _few_ pointed discussions with my dick at first, because I thought I was all manly and stuff, but…it feels good. Not just…getting off, I mean, though it’s also. Mind-blowing. Anyway. I feel more…me, I guess? Centered? Complete? I dunno how to put it.”

“I…took it fast,” she admits, voice a little small. “I’d put so many of my feelings aside for so long. My desires. And I was…scared. So I pushed through it and charged.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” He kisses the top of her head; he smells like his face care concoctions, like he’s been off pampering himself. “It’s all glorious, you’re glorious, it didn’t feel too fast to me. Wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’m sorry your life kind of sucks a ton.” He gives her shoulder a squeeze, quiet for a moment. “What…were you scared of?”

She’s silent for a while, enough that Lance starts to jitter, opens his mouth to apologize for asking, and she holds up a hand. “Letting go of what’s gone,” she says eventually, slow and careful, “enough to be there for what’s now. Letting myself feel, and want, because that’s vulnerable, and because there’s so much…so much I didn’t let myself feel that it had gotten to be frightening.” She pauses again, long and slow, turning the thought over a few times before voicing it. “Letting myself be…selfishly happy. Because I thought that could never happen again, that I’d find my happiness only through serving others, fulfilling my mission, all that. Because sometimes, at first, it felt…almost like betraying them, to be happy for my own sake, when they were gone.”

Lance catches her hand and folds it in both of his, warm and solid. “You deserve to be happy,” he says quietly. “I don’t think anybody who cared for you would disagree.”

It hits home. More like a gentle punch than the knife to the ribs it would have been during the first few phoebs of her new life—it’s a thought she’d had, a thing she’d realized, but hearing it from someone else is. Well. Something that makes her remind herself to breathe.

Lance squeezes her hand.

“You’ve…matured so much,” she says quietly. “Even since this started.”

“Well, I’ve had a good role model.” He gives a slightly lopsided smile. “And like I said. I feel centered and stuff. Which makes it sound like I’ve been doing, like, meditation classes or something, and not mind-bendingly kinky sex.”

She huffs a laugh. “Well, they can both induce altered states of consciousness. Really, I think the kinky sex does it rather more reliably than most meditation classes I’ve taken.”

He laughs. “Okay, I did like one meditation thing once at summer camp, that's it, but sounds legit. Is it—for you, too?”

“Which…?”

“Altered states? Centered? Meditationy stuff?”

“Mm…differently. Not as intensely in some ways.”

“Yeah, you need to actually be, like, able to think and stuff. Which I’m usually not.”

She ruffles his hair. “That’s the idea. For me, it’s…clarity, focus. I get to leave a lot of my worries at the door too. It’s…freeing to just be able to make one person happy and do what I like. Nobody dies if I ruggle it up.” She pauses, and squeezes his shoulder. “I’m sorry, though. That doesn’t make it _acceptable_ to ruggle it up.”

“I still don’t think you screwed it up,” Lance mumbles. “Wait. Does that mean ruggle means fuck? Is _that_ what means fuck since quiznak doesn’t mean fuck?”

“Yes, ruggle means fuck,” Allura sighs with good humor.

“Yessss.” He raises a fist in victory. Victory in learning foul alien language, she supposes. “Someday I’ll teach you to swear in Spanish.”

“Someday,” she says archly. Her innards are doing something warm and fluttery, because she might have expected a very serious conversation, maybe even a fight, but she didn’t expect _this_. Being comfortable again. Not quite like nothing had happened. But _comfortable_.

“So what someday,” he asks, and then makes the vague disgruntled-cat noise he makes sometimes when his thoughts are running everywhere, and restarts. “What…do you wanna do when the war is over?”

He’s Lance. So of course he asks _when_ and not _if._

Allura falls silent, blinking.

She doesn’t have an answer this time. Just a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The last time she had plans for the future—real plans, the settle-down kind—they’d involved a crown.

“I,” she starts, vaguely. “I…don’t know?”

He turns his head with a concerned sort of noise. That must have come out rather more pathetic than she’d thought.

“You—you know how sometimes you believe something, deep down, even though you know it’s probably not true, but it’s like how when you’re little and you just think stuff and—oh, I’m not explaining this at all?”

“Nah, I think I get what you mean. Like when you know the noise around the next corner is just gonna be more sentries but you sort of have the crazy thought that it’s gonna be like an escaped prisoner or something who we can rescue and not get shot at by, but it’s totally actually more sentries?”

“I used to think, the first few movements after I woke up, that…that this was all some strange time travel, or a big test, or—or _something_. That when it was over, when I’d defeated Zarkon, I’d go _back_.”

“Oh god,” Lance breathes.

“I don’t anymore,” Allura says in a bit of a rush, reaching for his hand. “I’m…here. It still feels like time travel sometimes, but I know it’s only one way. But I don’t know what’ll happen when it’s over. I…I’ll keep working for peace and freedom, I suppose.”

“Hey, you won’t be alone.” Lance squeezes her hand. “Visit Earth with me though?”

Allura feels like she’s doing one of those floating-drone exercises where they pelt her with half a dozen shots at once and they’re coming too fast to process. “Visit? But I thought you…”

“Man, I dunno.” Lance lets out a shaky sigh. “Maybe I’ll wind up wanting to stay forever, get a place, all that? But I don’t think I can give up the being an awesome space hero lifestyle that easily. Especially when I’m still young and beautiful. Retiring early doesn’t mean retiring in my prime!”

A few handfuls of years, Allura thinks, and wonders how humans age.

“So we’ll visit Earth and keep being superheroes, yeah?” Lance prompts.

“Yes.” Allura realizes she’s smiling. “Yes. That sounds—perfect.”

“Yessss.” He bumps her, shoulder to shoulder. Then quiets. “And are we…are we still, y’know. Are we going to keep doing meditation classes?”

She bursts out laughing, genuine and startled. “Meditation classes!”

“Hey, it’s a great, like…spy code…what’s the word…euphemism? Meditation classes. Not—crap, not, like. I’m not asking if you still think we’ll be meditating whenever the war ends. But…did that…”

“Did that mean we have to stop?”

He swallows hard, and looks at the floor, and nods.

“Before I can even answer that…” She feels her throat tighten. “Do you trust me enough to continue?”

He lifts his head, blinking. “Of course,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Stuff happens. I _know_ you never wanted to hurt me.”

“…thank you.” She finds his hand to squeeze. “I’m honored.” He squeezes back, a little uncertain. “I…I have to be able to trust you to signal,” she says, as gently as she can. “To do what we do.”

“I know.” He ducks his face against her shoulder, still with a twinge of guilt that makes her heart ache. “Hey…a-at least this probably like permanently beat that into my head?”

“Gods, Lance,” she sighs, and turns to bump her head against his. “It’s good to learn from a mistake, but…” She blows out a lungful of air. “I wish I could order you to stop blaming yourself. Please…don’t let this much keep hurting you. Not this.”

Lance goes oddly still for a moment, then says, mostly into her bicep, “You could try. See if it works. It’d be a neat trick.”

Allura blinks, pauses, considers for a moment whether that’s actually a good idea. “Would you actually stop or would you just pretend that you did?”

“Hrrf,” Lance says, by way of disgruntled answer. “Fair. Mean but fair.”

“Thanks? I think?”

He bumps her shoulder with his nose. “Yesh.” Then leaves it there, and says, somewhat nasally, “But what if.” And stops.

“What if?”

“What if I don’t know what’s wrong? I-if something’s hard and I don’t know why but I don’t want to just stop everything cold…”

“Then signal a pause, not a hard stop, and I’ll help you figure it out,” Allura says, soft but firm. “That’s part of my responsibility.”

He blinks at that, seeming a little taken aback.

“Stars and fires,” she sighs. “You put your entire life and heart and soul in my hands when we do this. We’re hardly playing light anymore. It’s a _tremendous_ trust given, and it’s an honor. And it _is_ my responsibility to take care of what you give me, and hand it back to you not any worse than I received it. Better, ideally. Even if that means taking a moment to check which of the dozen things I’d put you through at once was bothering you.”

“Better,” Lance whispers after a long moment of silent absorption. “It’s pretty much always been better.”

One knot of her own guilt, thoroughly and hypocritically ignored, loosens in her chest.

“But…okay, yeah. I think I get it.” His voice is soft, and he sounds genuinely a little stunned, and Allura wonders if a few phoebs ago he might have been protesting that his life and heart and soul wasn’t _that_ much, really.

“Or to take another tack,” she adds, a little lighter, “would you be as frazzled if you needed to pause and ask me to loosen your corset?”

His face twists a little, and then he laughs, slightly sheepish. “Ehh…yeah, probably not. I admit, I kind of expected you to do it tighter.”

She gives a soft laugh of her own. “Not with everything else I was planning to do to you.” And she skims a hand down the small of his back, just gently. “What, are you curious?”

“Mmmaybe,” he says, ears reddening. “I-it was nice. The way it—held me.”

“If it were tighter,” she says, letting her voice drop a little, “it would restrict your movements more. It might even be difficult for you to breathe.”

His breath hitches in his throat. “Y-yeah. I guess I. Continue to be kinky.”

“I would, of course, need to know the moment it became painful or frightening.”

He lets out a huff of a laugh. “Goal scored, yes, yes. I’ll signal if I need to. Nothing like that’s gonna happen again. I _promise._ ”

She studies him for a moment, catches the serious clench in his jaw, and kisses his forehead. “I’ll hold you to that. Thank you.”

“Thank  _you_ ," he says, a little low and hoarse after a pause.“For…everything. I guess I…hadn’t thought about how much work it was. To do all this for me, I mean."

“Oh, it’s _hardly_ just for you,” she says softly. “But you’re welcome. And thank  _you_.”

“For what?” he says, genuinely lost.

“For everything you give me. And for…for accepting me. Even the frightening parts.”

“Hey,” he says softly, sneaking his arms around her and squeezing. “Every part of you is awesome.”

They settle. They cuddle. Allura could almost pretend that things are all right, except for the the looming xznly squiwl in the room. The part where he loves her. And seems determined to pretend it doesn’t matter what she feels in answer. The answer she doesn’t even know how to _begin_ giving, with everything—everything—yet just leaving it unaddressed would be—

“Lance, about what you said before you left, I…”

He blinks, then elbows her lightly. “I _meant_ it, y’know. This has gotta be big for you and you don’t need to answer anything.”

Something tightens in her throat. “I…I feel wretched that I don’t _have_ an answer. It’s…it’s unfair, and—”

Her voice dies with a squeak because Lance is hugging her with all the force in his wiry human frame. “It’s okay,” he says, soft and earnest.

“It’s…” She has to swallow a few times before she can manage to speak. “It’s not, though. I’m taking advantage of your feelings.”

“Here I thought I was the one taking advantage of you,” Lance says quietly, and something in his voice stops her in her tracks.

“…why?” she asks softly, settling her arms around him in return.

“Being with you when I’m feeling all this stuff and keeping it to myself. And…and not…” His voice roughens. “Even if you wanted me for real, forever, I…couldn’t give that to you. _That’s_ unfair.”

“Damn it,” she croaks, and squishes him so hard something in his back pops and he groans fervently. “Oh—oh quiznak, are you all right, did I break something, do you need a pod?”

“Nno you’re fine it’s good that’d been bothering me for like a movement. Aaahhhh.” He sags against her and falls silent, rubbing a slow circle between her shoulderblades.

She wrestles her voice back under control. Eventually. Finally says, “Lance…this can’t be easy on you. Things like this…they eat at people. If you…”

“Hey,” he says, slightly muffled. “I promised I’d signal. And I mean it.”


	7. Beloved

 

**PART 7 ❇   BELOVED**

 

Overall, Lance doesn’t get many stolen moments with Allura, what with being Paladins and all. Especially when the imperial tides shift and the war picks up again. Half the time when they do have a night, they’re too exhausted to do anything except flop on the couch and take in the latest update on Bii-boh and her cheating boyfriend Boh-bi and his evil twin Boh-bi who’s also with Bii-boh but she doesn’t realize it and Lance is on tenterhooks waiting for the shoe to drop about her mother. Or sometimes they play Killbot Phantasm, but Allura handing his eight-bit ass to him is getting a _little_ old.

At any rate, it’s been a while since they took time for a date, like a real, proper, going-out-and-finding-something-that-makes-them-both-smile-until-their-faces-hurt date. But they’re settling into things, it’s only a _minor_ apocalypse if Lance doesn’t get a collar around his neck and his face between Allura’s legs every night they have time and can move, and they miss wandering around new and exciting alien planets on a regular basis. Or at least new-ish. They’re deep in Coalition territory at the moment, making the political rounds, and they’ll probably have even a _couple_ of good days for dates and also getting his face between Allura’s legs. And the latest session of political surgery with the Chancellor of Somenutsville, as Lance has decided to call him, has left Allura prickly, slumped, and whining.

At least Somenutsville has two suns, spectacular half-sunsets, an embarcadero along their toxic but glittering purple river, and a lot of really good street food. So they can sit on a bench and eat salty-sweet roasted _somethings_ that get all over their chins as Allura does the he’s my _ally_ so I shouldn’t _say_ this but _ugh_. “Ugh! He _has_ the resources! The Galra barely touched this planet’s infrastructure, especially compared to so many others, they practically used it as a spa. He’s _got_ to be skimming. Or letting his friends skim. His oily friends. Who hit on me. And he expects Voltron to swan in and fix the problems he’s created with his own greed because he’s guilt-tripped us about being defenders of the universe?”

Lance prickles. “Did they _really_.”

“I mean, I haven’t seen the balance sheets, but he was _so_ vague about these supposed shortages he’s been facing…oh, stars and fires.” She sighs and flops over the back of the bench. “The sad thing is, a phoeb or two ago I’d have bought it. I think Hunk’s rubbing off on me.”

“Hunk is a sage.” Lance helpfully pops a salty-sweet roasted _something_ in Allura’s mouth. “Did they really hit on you.”

She makes a disgruntled noise, slot-eyed as she chews. “Yesh.” And swallows. “Lance, you don’t need to be jealous of the Chancellor of Somenutsville’s oily friends.”

Lance snortgiggles. “But like, on principle, they’re oily. You said Somenutsville. I got you to say Somenutsville!”

“I said Somenutsville of my own volition!” Allura tosses her head airily and steals another one of Lance’s snacks.

“Somenutsville,” Lance grins, and steals one of hers back.

“Somenutsville!” Allura rankly cheats, extending her reach to make it to Lance’s paper cone even though he’s holding it at arm’s length.

“Oh you’re _on_ ,” Lance growls.

One food fight later, a goodly amount of Allura’s tension has blown off, both their clothes are going to need a trip through the sonic washers, and they’re grinning from ear to ear. The local equivalent of seagulls, which are more like green flappy bat things, are descending on their scattered snacks. Allura takes a moment to coo over them before Lance spots a bridge with little viewing pagodas over the river and tugs at her hand. They scamper for it, chattering all the way about whether nuts is always going to mean testicles if a culture has both nuts and testicles and other vital subjects of defending-the-universe importance, and once they get up over the river, the wind comes up and Lance squeaks as his jacket hood flaps over his head.

Allura catches him by the jacket ties, draws the hood so tight it covers his eyes, leans him up against a railing, and kisses him silly.

If there’s some faint squealing behind them, Lance doesn’t notice. Not until she lets him breathe, and he shoves his hood back off and turns it inside the collar so it stops flapping, and she tweaks his nose and says she isn’t going anywhere, and he laughs and says seriously, it’s okay, because it _is_ , actually, it used to tie his stomach in knots every time somebody was close to Allura, with something between blind panic and crippling insecurity, but he’s _here_ , and she still wants him even though he’s a short-lived monkey with too many feelings. And _then_ he notices the squealing, because it’s louder, and somewhere in it he catches _loverboy Lance!_

“Oh, _no_ ,” Allura groans softly.

Lance turns with his best tooth-sparkling grin. “ _Ladies~_ ”

They’re locals, with spiky purple hair that trails to their waists and glittering eyes and long fingers, and they’re ear-piercingly excited. There’s hand-wringing. Selfies. Autographs. Finger guns. Flirtation. The usual _ah we’re on hiatus, no I can’t say anything about our next season, it’s all very secret you know_. Lance mostly manages to keep their attention on him and not “Keith” bobbing awkwardly against the railing. God, he’s missed this. Not that there isn’t still the occasional encounter like this one, but the crowds, the fame…

They finally wrap things up—he blows kisses, they do some strange wiggly thing with their hair that seems to be about the equivalent—and trail off down the bridge whispering about how they’ll have to tell _all their friends right now_. Lance stretches, tucks away his phone, and turns back to Allura.

Who looks decidedly uncomfortable.

Shit.

“Shit,” Lance says, and then again, “shit. I’m so sorry.”

Allura blinks at him owlishly. “Why are you apologizing, you made them _go away_ —oh, I hope they didn’t hear that.”

“I—you know that’s just the thing I do, like, for the fans, I didn’t mean it, not for real…” Lance feels like his small intestine has been smacked with Blue’s own freeze ray. “Oh my god, I’m a tool.”

Allura’s brows knit for a moment, then she says, “Wait, do you actually think I’m upset with _you_?”

“I…” Lance swallows hard. “Flirted with them in front of you? Who wouldn’t be?”

“Oh, Lance,” Allura sighs. “No, it’s fine. I know how you handle the fans, I wouldn’t expect that to change—god knows you’re better at it than the rest of us. I just don’t like being not myself in public appearances, even informal ones, that’s all. It’s why I didn’t like the whole Voltron Show business that much.”

Lance deflates a little, but his gut’s still twisting up in knots. “At least you got a good role for that, all you had to do was stand there and look cranky. Oh my god. Oh my _god_. They think I’m dating Keith. I just made me and Keith canon.” He’s running his mouth, he can tell, but he needs to say something, anything, because Allura still has a look in her eyes that he can’t make out. “Okay, that’s okay, I’m cool, I’m confident in my masculinity. They think he’s you, they don’t know he has a mullet, I don’t have to be caught dead dating a mullet…”

“From what I understand of Earth standards of masculinity, you’re _very_ comfortable with them,” Allura says cheerfully and squeezes his ass.

Lance squeaks, backs against her, thinks of the last time she’d fucked him—pinned to the wall, legs around her waist, holding his full weight up like he was a rag doll, gravity dragging him down on a shapeshifted cock so big he felt like he’d split open, howling and helpless and begging for more—and turns red so fast he could swear his hair catches fire. The backing up has left him bent over a little, one hand on the bridge railing, and his mile-a-minute treacherous brain full of treachery fills in the fantasy of Allura pulling down his pants and taking him right here, fucking him against the railing for anyone to see, maybe cuffed there so he can’t even hide his face in his hands—

“I wouldn’t be upset if you _were_ involved with somebody else,” Allura goes on. “Not as long as I trust them with you. And I certainly don’t mind flirting. It’s not exactly a surprise to me, you know.”

Lance stops breathing for a moment, and then _does_ bend over and put his face on the railing, because it’s cool and solid and he needs something to make sense.

“Lance? Are you okay?” Allura’s hand settles in his hair. “Does the food here disagree with you?”

Lance laughs, a little high and scattered. “No I’m not gonna puke I’m okay. I’m okay. I just. Did you. Say what I thought you did?”

“Yes?” She sounds genuinely innocent, more puzzled than anything else. “Oh, are humans monogamous?”

“Being Boh-bi is _baaad_ ,” Lance wails, because it’s the only thing that comes to mind that could _possibly_ address the situation.

“Well of _course_ being Boh-bi is bad! The first Boh-bi, I assume you mean, because he’s cheating. Well, his twin is knowingly violating the boundaries of somebody _else’s_ relationship, that’s just as bad.”

Lance makes some strangled noise of confusion.

“Let’s find a bench,” Allura says gently, and steers him the rest of the way to one of the little pagodas tacked onto the bridge. It’s equipped with benches and 10-GAC coin-op binoculars and a cunningly designed green-flappy-bat-thing-proof trash can, because some things are universal. They’re seven _galaxies_ away from Earth and he’s sitting with his gorgeous alien princess girlfriend talking about monogamy and staring at coin-op binoculars. Well, not talking. Stalling out. She’s rubbing circles between his shoulderblades.

“Okay,” Lance says eventually. “Wow. Sorry I’m.” He flaps his hand.

“Emotionally off balance because I accidentally discovered a fundamental difference in relationship expectations? So am I.”

She doesn’t look it, of course, because she’s Allura, and also navigating cultural differences is literally her _job_ when she’s not defending the universe. Lance relaxes a few more inches and leans against her.

“Tell me about your assumptions?” she prompts eventually.

Lance takes a deep breath and unpacks Serious Human Dating 101: Don’t Cheat, which is way too fancy a way to think about it given that he isn’t very coherent and doesn’t have a laser pointer _or_ a slideshow, and halfway through it devolves into not wanting to be that asshole Uncle Johnny because he every family holiday he’d hear Aunt Rita bitching about how he’s got time for all the younger girls and never time for her.

Allura absorbs it, nods, and says, “The expectations for behavior aren’t that different, actually. There’s just an assumed and universal boundary, instead of the flexibility of being able to define it yourselves.” She sounds a touch wistful at the last.

Lance wrestles with that increasingly familiar sensation of handing Allura something complicated and seeing her turn it upside-down and suddenly change all the perspective like it’s some weird emotional magic eye puzzle.

“So no, you haven’t gone against my actual boundaries, only your assumed ones.” She pauses, playing with his hair and staring off down the glittering purple river. “I’ve noticed…if anything, you’re less prone to jealousy now that we’re together.”

Lance makes a disgruntled noise. “I…guess? A-at least I know I haven’t…” He stops and starts again. “It’s not like I didn’t know that like…Keith or Lotor or whoever is way cooler than me, and more badass and handsome and everything, even if one of them’s a mullet and one of them’s a smug grape. Like I didn’t stand a chance. So I’d get all…snarled up.”

“Especially when they’re people you have some other reason to dislike,” Allura observes. “You never seemed to mind it when I spent time alone with Shiro.”

“Sure, but he’s Shiro, he’s perfect except when he yells at me.”

Allura makes a thoughtful noise that Lance isn’t quite sure how to analyze. “I’d hope at this point you know you stand a chance.”

“Yeah, like, I don’t have amnesia.” Lance laughs just a touch awkwardly. “I guess I’m…” He stops, realizing it the moment he’s about to say it, and it’s genuinely a little surprising. “I guess I’m not as insecure about that stuff anymore?”

“ _Good_ ,” she says, firm and proud in one, squeezes his shoulder, and turns her head to kiss him on the temple. “It’s not really…been relevant yet, but if it was, if I wanted to be involved with somebody else _without_ ending what we have, would that bother you?”

Lance feels his eyes widen as he chews on that. “If…if I say yes, would you think less of me?” he asks, throat tight, as much to stall as anything else.

“No,” she says, without hesitation. “Everybody has their needs.”

Lance buries his face in her shoulder as he tries to make sense of himself. Is he still afraid of losing her if she has a chance to do a side-by-side-comparison with some awesome smug grape or whoever? Does he trust that she means it, the whole without ending what they have part? Is that…actually the only reason it would bother him?

“Is I don’t know a stupid answer?” he mumbles eventually into her sleeve.

“No,” she says, again without hesitation, like she’s surprised he’d even ask. “Predicting your own reactions is hard.”

“I’ll…figure it out if you…if you want to, when you want to?”

“Of course. And I’m not going to go behind your back with anything. I _promise_. That’s cheating regardless of what kind of relationship you have.”

“Same,” Lance says, a little urgently. “Same. I’m not gonna…I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I know.” She kisses his temple again, and he feels some tide of gnawing confusion and uncertainty ease a little. “If it wasn’t cheating,” she asks, “if I knew and consented, would you want to?”

Lance squeaks.

“Be with somebody else, I mean?”

Nope, here’s a whole new tide of what-the-fuck. She’s just throwing them at him today. Lance feels his face heat. “I-if it was actually okay, if you were actually okay…nah, I’m still wrapping my brain around that one.”

She ruffles his hair. “You can do it. I know how flexible you are.”

“Mrraahhh,” Lance says, flustered, and it startles him into laughter. “Okay. Um. I.” He swallows. “I don’t wanna feel like I’m betraying you. That might just be brain-wrapping though.”

“It’s very sweet of you,” she says gently. “But you wouldn’t be. It’s all right.”

“I…w-well, I…” He keeps his face buried in her shoulder for safety’s sake. “I…I used to think stuff like, well, there’s a lot of fish in the sea, I don’t want to…” He pauses. “Okay, this is like my first real relationship? I always thought I’d, y’know, date around a little, play the field. Because…because I wanted to know what things would be like with all sorts of different girls. And, wow, that makes me sound like an ass.”

“Not at all. That’s…well, I suppose you can never say normal about any of this, but you want to have a variety of experiences. Share happiness with people. I’d be a hypocrite if I said that made you an ass.”

“…okay.”

“We…both took it fast,” she says, quiet and thoughtful.

“…yeah.” He swallows hard. “But this is something…really special, and I don’t want it to not be special. W-would it still be special if we’re…?”

“Of course.” She pauses, rearranges a little, and nudges his chin up so he can’t hide his face anymore. “Every relationship is different, Lance.” Her expression’s very earnest, like she wants him to understand something important. The pink glitter of her pupils is very bright. “It’s not a zero-sum game. Whoever else I was with, however awesome you think they are, they couldn’t replace you because they’re _not you_ , and that relationship wouldn’t be this relationship, and the same goes for you.”

Lance thinks he might actually have stopped breathing for a moment there.

“…oh,” he says, very softly.

Allura smooths a hand down his cheek and looks at him, earnesty melting into thoughtfulness. “You know…when I got this close with a, ah, royal companion of some sort. Or whatever other term I’d use—obviously not only royalty dates.”

Lance feels a grin bubble up in spite of all the feelings. “Yeah, but you’re royalty, so own it.”

She laughs a little. “It would be customary to give ourselves a…a different and more tangible kind of marking. Matching jewelry, usually, chosen to represent the relationship. Something that could be worn most of the time, if not all.”

“Oh—like rings?” Lance feels his voice go a little squeaky in spite of himself. Surely this wasn’t… _ring_ serious yet?

“Rings? But they’re so easily lost! And pinch under space gloves.”

“…you know, I don’t actually know why it’s rings. We’ve got something like that on Earth.” Lance dives into Wedding, Engagement, and Promise Rings 101, _still_ with no laser pointer or slideshow.

Allura soaks it up and nods. “Like promise rings, it seems. In terms of significance. Sometimes they'd change as a relationship evolved. Usually necklaces, bracelets, earrings, things that are easier to hold onto. To honor what’s special, regardless of somebody’s other involvements.”

“That sounds…” Lance takes a deep, shaky breath, and realizes his heart’s hammering in his chest. “That sounds. Good.”

Allura smiles warmly. “We don’t need to figure out the dating other people part now, really—I’m sorry if it sounded like I was pressing you on that. Work it out as we go?”

“Yeah.” Lance swallows hard. “Let this be what it’ll be.”

“With something sparkly?”

He feels a grin breaking out. “With something sparkly.”

 

**❇**

 

Allura, alone in the quiet of night, digs through her closet.

She’d evacuated to the Castle of Lions in the final stages of the invasion, in chaos, all raw pain and nerves bundled under her well trained royal demeanor. Under her bone deep _ache_ to be fighting instead of running. The staff was gamely pretending that this was almost normal. That perhaps they’d be coming back. That there was a point to packing a few crates of their Princess’ precious things. Jewelry. Trinkets.

Allura remembers her aid scrambling down the hall with the float-crates bobbing in his wake, pressing them through the hatch. hesitating and withdrawing when Coran gravely told him that it would only be himself and the King and the Princess.

Allura’s never had a reason to go through those crates until now. The dress she’d woken up in, the coronet and comm-earrings, the spacesuit and a few basic supplies she’d tossed in her own crate—that had been more than enough. Perhaps, she thinks vaguely as she opens the hatch with her handprint, she’s been _afraid_ to go through them. Ten thousand years in deep storage. She doesn’t even know what’s in there. How much will be intact.

It’s...painful.

They weren’t well-packed. Some of her favorite things had slipped, coiled inside the black shell of the helmet that had been her birth-present from _him_ , and she has to stop and pick them out and set them aside carefully and toss the helmet, all by itself, deeper, where it can’t touch anything. Though not after staring at herself in its dark-steel shell for a long while. A mineral mined only in the soft-vacuum, ice-glimmering tail of Daibazaal. Prized above platinum by the Galra even then, feather-light and strong as diamonds. How much of it still exists—she doesn’t know.

Probably more than exists of Altea.

She isn’t even sure if what she’s looking for is in here.

But there it is, in the corner of the second box. A choker of fine silk-gold set with a glittering gem of sunstone. A matching bracelet.

Astra had died on the front lines of the war. Blown out the bridge of a fallen cruiser. Weeks, maybe, before Allura left and Altea fell. Knife-focused, dedicated, serious Astra, with her rippling shoulder muscles and her smokey-dark skin and her promising-military-career-for-one-so-young. And her glitter-bright smiles that cracked her stoney facade when she let herself go, and the tension that would melt off her shoulders when she knelt, and her smile, gods, her _smile_. A good influence on Allura, some people liked to say. Allura liked to think she’d been a good influence on her. Either way—

Either way, her funeral had been ten thousand years ago, her ashes scattered to be stardust as all of Altea’s dead should be. Properly, at least. With the rites. Her will had said that she wanted Allura to have the choker back, to remember her by, and Allura’s own thumb-seal had been needed to peel it off her throat as she lay in corpse-stasis, frozen and purple, and Allura hadn’t been able to bear wearing the bracelet after that, because it didn’t feel like the right kind of remembering, it felt like a lie and a false prayer, like at least those two bits of jewelry should be close even if they couldn’t ever be, even if she was stardust and gone...

Allura leans back on her heels, and fusses for a while over folding the collar and wristband just so in her cupped hands, and closes the crates slowly, and lifts her chin high, and goes to find Lance.

 

**❇**

 

Lance stares down at the two gold bands in Allura’s hands, soft and flexible, one short, one long.

“It’s—well, it wasn’t the only way of marking a royal companion, there were all sorts of jewelry, and traditions, but for a relationship like ours, this would be.” She stops, starts again. Her voice seems a little strained. “Like a collar and a control band, but symbolic. It won’t _change_ what we have, it doesn’t mean that I control you outside of what we choose, but. Well, if you don’t think it’s appropriate, if you’d rather another marker, I could, but this is.”

“Hey,” Lance says. “It’s fine. It’s _great_.” His mouth feels a little dry. “Okay, wow, yeah, I’d wear a collar for you like all the time, but is that, are those…”

“From Altea.”

Silence hangs for a moment, and Lance stares up at her, having one of those slow creeping realizations that he doesn’t really want to have but he can’t _not_ have. “Were they…somebody’s?”

Allura’s smile cracks a little, softens. “…yes. She…was dear to me.”

Lance bites his lip and scoots to the edge of his bed so he can slide his hands under Allura’s, because he’s feeling about sixty-two more things than he can possibly figure out what to do with right now but the important part is that Allura’s—not calm. The hurting and pretending she’s okay kind of not calm? She’d come to his room for this, just shown up, standing there in her dressing-gown against his mess of knick-knacks and homebrew skin care stuff and a sprawling photo-wall that’s at least forty percent her by now. She almost never comes to his room. He goes to hers, and sleeps over in her big bed, and sometimes she wants nights alone, and that’s fine, and all his stuff is here, and she’s in his room and she’s not okay.

“They’re all I have,” Allura starts again, valiantly. “Of the sort of jewelry I’d give a companion. I might need to adjust the size a little, but I can do that, of course, that’s not—”

“Do you—want to, though?” Lance blurts. “If they were hers?”

For a second, Allura just stares at him. Her eyes are shining.

“No,” she croaks, voice very small.

Then she cracks on a sob.

“Oh shit sorry, oh god I made you cry, okay you’re crying, it’s okay, I got you, hey, it’s okay…”

Lance honestly isn’t quite sure whether he stood up and wrapped her up or whether she toppled against him, but then they’re both crumpled on the floor, and she’s a ball in his arms, and she’s crying. Really gut-wrenching scream-sobbing crying. He’s barely ever seen her cry before. Certainly not like this. She’s pressing the two golden bands to her chest, and he bundles her against him and mostly just holds on and tries to keep her hair out her snot.

She goes for a while. Long enough that Lance stops panicking and falls into this strange, calm sort of haze where he’s just going to hold her and murmur whatever soothing nonsense comes to mind and sing stuff his mom used to sing when he had tantrums when he was little. Or Disney songs. Whatever his brain coughs up.

By the time she comes up for air, she’s wet-faced and hiccuping a little and utterly wretched-looking, and he loves her so much it hurts. He stretches a leg out to nudge the tissue dispenser into range.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have,” she starts, weakly, and he squishes her hard.

“Hey. ’Sokay. Seriously.” He shoves a few things around to make room as she mops her face, then flops back and bundles her along with him to curl on his chest. One of those things is the giant blue tentacle plushie friend from the carnival, and on second thought he reels it in to drape it over Allura’s back, soft and squishy.

“Your _shirt_ ,” she mumbles.

“Has gotten worse things on it, the laundry pods are freaking magic.” Food goo might count as worse than pink princess snot. The machine oil explosion Hunk had that one time was _definitely_ worse. He smoothes her hair and kisses the top of her head. “Are you…feeling a little better?”

She sighs by way of answer, and pretty much burrows into his jacket, and for a while, they just lie there, her weight full on him, one hand still clutching the jewelry.

“Keep them,” he says softly. “They’re special.”

“So’re you,” she says, a very small voice against his collarbone, and his stomach does a weird watery flip-flop at that.

“We can get something new somewhere. Or like…whatever works. As long as you’re okay with it being…”

“Something new?” she finishes. Something not Altean, Lance thinks—that must hurt, even if the alternative hurts more.

“Yeah.”

“But you do want…”

“Yeah. God yeah. I want you to…” Mark him. No, this is more than just markings. Lance swallows hard. “I want you to put a collar on me. Super definitely.”

She picks her head up a little, still pink-eyed. “All right,” she says slowly. Then again. “All right.” She scoots up a little and kisses his cheek softly. “It would be my honor,” she murmurs against his cheek, and there’s that weird flip-flop in his stomach again.

 

**❇**

 

Lance shows up at Allura’s door early in the next evening, holding a whole armful of…spools of string?

“So okay, I had an idea? Sorry it took me a while. I had to find string. And remember how to make them. And how to put beads in them because sparkly things are important. And make sure this stuff wouldn’t shrink in water because strangling myself in the shower would be a _really_ stupid way to go.”

“Make what?” Allura asks, blinking. She’s already in her dressing gown for the night, combing out her hair in her mirror.

“Friendship bracelets. Or. Not a bracelet I guess?” Lance toes off his shoes and flumps down cross-legged on her bed with a smile and spills the spools out of his arms. There are a few bags of little glittering crystals in there too. “It’s a thing I remember from when I was a kid, but a lot of people make ‘em, I think. Oh, want me to do your hair first?”

Something in Allura’s chest flutters at the sight of him, sitting there comfortable as anything in the thin folds of his jacket, reaching out one hand and waggling his fingers at her with an easy smile. Then the mice pop out of his hood with a squeak, and she _aches_ , and swishes over to take his hand and kiss him instead.

By the time they finish, the mice have sorted all the string by color and are playing with the ends, and Lance takes her comb and brush and sets to work with easy skill. She relaxes into it, distracting the mice with fingertip scritches before they start knitting or something. “So what are friendship bracelets?”

“Right! Yes. Friendship bracelets…” He rambles at length about what seems to be an endearing and meaningful Earth tradition, and she soaks it in and picks out some favorite colors absentmindedly. Tests the strength of the string.

“They’re…meant to be impermanent?”

“Yeah. Like it depends a lot on how strong the string is of course, and how thick the braid is, but they all go eventually if you wear them every day. When it breaks, you get a wish. And then maybe you make another one. My friends in grade school would do them again every summer when school let out.”

“Oh,” she says softly, closing her eyes and basking as he gathers up her hair to braid it for sleeping—something he’d talked her into, she’d never bothered, she was always so tired come bedtime. “Well, wishes are important.”

“Very.” He drops a kiss on the back of her head. “I figure…the future is the future, you know? I know it’s complicated. It’ll.” He pauses; she can hear him swallow. “It’ll last how it lasts and then we’ll do what we do, yeah?”

“Yes. And this is…important for now.”

“ _Very._ ” He ties off her hair, bats the braid so it swings back and forth, and she snorts and tugs him around to face her.

“If we’re supposed to make them for each other, you’ll have to show me how. Should they match?”

“They don’t always but—yeah, these should _totally_ match.” He holds up a finger. “I vote blue.”

“Definitely blue! White and pink? How many colors can you use?”

“Depends, though…” He scrunches up his nose. “I never learned a lot of the really fancy patterns, that was more Veronica’s thing. I used this sort of wave pattern a lot, that’s four colors. Bright blue and then a darker blue? Or purple?”

“Well, we’d have to make sure the blues don’t clash—”

“— _duh_ , yeah—”

They pull out threads, hold them up against each other, settle on the perfect shades. Bright white. Pale blue, almost the color of Altean energy. Pink like her armor, a slightly darker blue than his so that it balances the pale. It all goes together nicely.

Lance shows her how to start it, leaving an end to tie it on with, and then chews his lip for a moment. “Okay, let me start and make sure I remember the pattern…”

He peels off his socks and tucks the end between his toes, then starts knotting, fingers flickering back and forth. Pauses to string a bead. Frowns. Unpicks. Restarts. She settles in behind him, looping her arms around his waist and resting her chin on his shoulder. “ _There_ we go,” he says, relaxing a touch, and picks up speed. “Man, I forgot how long these take.”

“Mm. It’s early, though. We’ve got time.” She picks at the hem of her dressing gown. “I wasn’t planning to sleep early, I just wanted to relax.”

“Take the spacesuit off, put your feet up, let your boobs breathe free?”

“ _Must_ you call them that.”

“Yes. I _must._ ” She can feel his grin tugging at his cheek, and she wiggles, pressing her chest closer against his back. “Tatas. Kahunas. Life ruinersssmmmph.” She clamps her hand over his mouth, biting back her giggle. He licks her palm.

“I think I’ve got the pattern…should I start and then we can work at the same time?”

“Thehs proolly a guh dee,” he says, before she takes her hand off his face. “Yeah, let me get you started.”

They chatter about how loose the collar should be if he’s going to be wearing it every day, measure, estimate. They trade places to start: Allura cross-legged, Lance draped over her from behind, and he says it’s a good thing he braided her hair or it would eat him, and wiggles his hip against hers, and all sorts of other things as she gets goings. It’s simple enough, really. He corrects her a few times, a little nervously, snaking his arms around to show her as if his hands are hers.

“I think I’ve got it,” she says, picking up speed. The mice come over to help, stringing beads and managing the trailing ends and bobbing back and forth so they don’t get tangles, and after a bit, with some squeaky internal debate, the party divides, with Platt and Chulatt rolling over to help Lance. He grins, pets them, settles back to back with her, and picks his own work back up.

“Gotta say, you guys make this _so_ much easier, untangling the ends is like half the work. At least. And you do the beads too!”

They chatter as they work, joke, trade stories. Occasionally he jitters impatiently and she twists around to kiss his shoulder to settle him. She leans against the wiry warmth of his back and and feels a deep contentment welling in her chest and wonders what she’d been afraid of.

He finishes the bracelet and lays it carefully on the mattress.

She’s not even halfway done yet.

She knots. And knots. And knots. He unpeels from her back, unbraids her hair, puts it into five braids instead, makes a crown, unpins that, makes a different crown. By the time she’s halfway through, he’s telling her at length about a series of movies from a great creator called Disney. The movies come with songs. The songs come with demonstrations. Sometimes he jolts off her for dramatic posing, flourishes, bounces about the room, comes back to drape over her with a fwump. Allura likes the one with the girl who took her family’s place in battle and triumphed over invasion, which doesn’t surprise Lance at all. She feels an unexpected pang about the crown princess who had to hide her magic, and actually has to stop and rub at her eyes when the island chief’s daughter puts a seashell on top of the mountain and leads her people out to explore.

“S-sorry—”

“Oh, don’t _even_ , Moana makes everyone happy-cry.” Lance plants a kiss on her cheek, bright-eyed. “Hunk has a rule that he literally can’t watch it in front of anyone who’s not family, it gets him that bad.”

“Oh _dear_.” She shakes herself a little and kisses his forehead in return, feeling a glittering smile bubble up. “Well. It’s—a good story. Get over here, let me check the length.”

He leans over, makes a thoughtful noise and fidgets with it as she wraps it around the base of his neck. “Another inch or two, maybe? It’s getting there though.”

She unwraps it and tucks it back between her toes, and he straightens a little slowly, fingers brushing the hollow of his throat. He’s suddenly quiet, a little awed.

“Yes?” she asks softly.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and tucks a wisp of her hair behind her ear like she’s made of spun glass. “Yeah. It’s good.”

Allura watches the mice get the strands back in order for knotting, and almost hesitates before saying, “Kneel between my legs and hold it for me while I finish?”

“Yeah,” Lance says again, a little thickly, his throat bobbing as he swallows. He scrambles around, settles, takes hold of the other end. She mostly has to watch what she’s doing as she goes back to knotting, but she can feel his eyes on her, the way his usual baby-yupper energy is settling into a deep, anticipatory calm. Another inch. Another test. Then he nods, wordless, and tells her how to finish it off.

Then there’s two bands of blue and white and pink lying side by side on the mattress, the width of her little finger, one long, one short.

“So, uh.” Lance pauses for a deep breath. “Is there like. A way we should do this?”

Allura opens her mouth, closes it, tries to remember all the pretty oaths she and Astra had written, then thinks of fraying threads and wars and eighty-year lifespans and options and the way Lance’s eyes light up when he talks about children, and shakes her head. “I…think we’re making it up as we go.” It feels like shedding weight; it aches; she’s bouyant. No oaths. Just—being who they are. “Is there anything humans do? With the bracelets, I mean?”

“Depends, I guess? Usually with my friends, we’d just tie them on each other and that was it.”

She nods and passes him the bracelet, wordless.

He passes her the collar, cheeks flushing just a little. Then looks at her hands. “Uh.”

“It’s all right. I’ll go first—that’s how I did it before.” She closes her eyes for a moment. Wishes well to the dead. Sheds another layer of weight.

“Should I get on the floor or something?” Lance mumbles, eyes widening as his nerves ratchet up.

She considers it for a moment, but it doesn’t feel right. Maybe someday if they do this again, molded and never-fraying silk-silver and a star sapphire at his throat, with something gauze-thin to cling to his long limbs as he kneels at her feet—but it’s a simple bit of knotted string in her hands right now, and she doesn’t want to move, and somehow just this, kneeling on her bed in his humble rumpled hoodie and jeans from Earth, is perfect. “Just. Let me…”

It comes out a little rough around the edges. Her _mouth_ is _dry_. That’s—that doesn’t happen often, does it?

“Yeah,” he says, and settles on his heels, and bows his head just a little. His hands folded loosely in his lap, holding the bracelet.

She nearly gets tangled in her dressing gown for a moment before she sorts herself out and scoots up to kneel up before him. She folds down his jacket a little, pushing his hood out of the way. He’s breathing slow and shallow, and she can feel his pulse coming fast as she smooths her palm over the back of his neck.

Allura wraps the thin handmade collar round Lance’s throat, and brushes the soft hair at the nape of his neck out of the way, and does the first half of the knot, and pauses. “Too tight?”

He breathes, wiggles his head from side to side, lifts one hand to stick his fingers under it. “’S good.”

She does the second half of the knot. The cord’s soft. She pulls the knot very tight. Maybe now, with work, it could be unpicked. Probably not after a few showers.

Lance lets out a deep, shaky sigh, runs his hand around to feel it. “Holy crap,” he breathes. Then lifts his head and whispers, almost urgently, “I’m yours. I love you.”

Allura feels her chest clench and frames his face in her hands and kisses his forehead.

Lance lifts the bracelet and asks, a little shakily, “Right? Left?”

“Right.”

He catches her right hand in both of his, bracelet pressed against her palm, as if he needs to steady his hands. He ties the bracelet, asks her if it’s too tight, just as she did for him. His head’s bowed a little as he makes sure the knot is perfect, and she can see the matching pattern. Her wrist, his neck; her control band, his collar. The bracelet’s soft against her wrist, loose, but she can’t quite forget it’s there, and suddenly it’s very, very real, and she’s living in this time, and she’s not _alone_ in this time, and, and—

“You’re mine,” she breathes. And then he’s kissing the back of her hand, reverent, and she’s realized. “And I’m yours. I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I has a [tumblr](http://letterblade.tumblr.com)


End file.
